Livro Sobre Filosofia

Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo ·
Bronislaw Czarnocha · Maurício Rosa ·

Małgorzata Marciniak Editors
Ongoing
Advancements
in Philosophy
of Mathematics
Education
Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy
of Mathematics Education
Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo
Bronislaw Czarnocha
Maurício Rosa • Małgorzata Marciniak
Editors
Ongoing Advancements
in Philosophy of
Mathematics Education
Editors
Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo Bronislaw Czarnocha
Mathematics Department Mathematics Department Hostos CC
São Paulo State University City University of New York
Campus of Rio Claro New York, NY, USA
Rio Claro, Brazil
Małgorzata Marciniak
Maurício Rosa LaGuardia Community College
Department of Teaching and Curriculum Long Island, NY, USA
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
ISBN 978-3-031-35208-9 ISBN 978-3-031-35209-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35209-6
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Preface
Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy of Mathematics Education approaches the

philosophy of mathematics education in a forward movement, analyzing, reflecting,
and proposing significant contemporary themes in the field of mathematics educa-
tion. It furthers the proposal of The Philosophy of Mathematics Education Today,
edited by Paul Ernest, published by Springer, in 2018. The book contains many
articles presented and discussed at ICME 13, within TSG 53, Philosophy of
Mathematics Education, which took place in Hamburg, Germany, in 2016. Besides
those articles, the editor, Paul Ernest, invited other authors to contribute relevant
work in the field.
This book, Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy of Mathematics Education
contains work presented and discussed during the ICME 14, which took place in
2021 in Shanghai, China, within TSG 56, whose main objective was to focus on the
relationship between the philosophy of mathematics and mathematics education. Its
goal was to characterize the interaction and dialogue between these areas, including
what can be highlighted when one uses the methodology of philosophical research
to question the ontology, epistemology, or ethics of mathematics regarding mathe-
matics education, or conversely when one unveils the philosophical outreach of
mathematical ideas, concepts, or methodologies, especially in an educational con-
text where mathematical practices may be worked through teaching and learning
processes.
ICME 14 was a hybrid event, that is, some people participated in person, others
remotely. The event should have taken place in 2020, with all participants on site.
However, that became impossible in view of the pandemic that plagued humanity
between 2019 and 2020. The original date was thus postponed to July 2021. During
the closing section of the activities of TSG 56, the participants proposed that a book
be published in order to compile the articles discussed during the activities of
TSG. As a TGS 56 Team Member, I have taken on the task of organizing such book
in collaboration with Bronisław Czarnocha, Maurício Rosa, and Małgorzata
Marciniak. It is important to point out that, as ICME 14 had been scheduled to take
place in 2020, the Team Members of TSG 56 were different from those who took
over the organization of ICME 2021. For several reasons, all of the members of that
v
vi Preface
team were unable take on TSG 56 in 2021. I, also for health reasons arising from
having contracted Coronavirus, also could not continue as chair.
Bronisław Czarnocha graciously accepted the position, and then I acted as co-
chair to help him with the articles derived from work conducted previously. With
this new structure, the work of TSG 56 was successfully conducted.
The chapters comprising this volume present studies conducted by the authors
who participated in the Topic Study Group that focused the theme “Philosophy of
Mathematics and Mathematics Education,” one of the activities that took place dur-
ing the International Congress of Mathematics Education – ICME 14, 2021, in
Shanghai, China. Also, in this volume, there are chapters written by guest authors
and relevant researchers who study this subject on the international scene.
The theme that gives life to the book is philosophy of mathematics education
understood as arising from the intertwining between philosophy of mathematics and
philosophy of education which, through constant analytical and reflective work
regarding teaching and learning practices in mathematics, is materialized in its own
discipline, philosophy of mathematics education. This is the field of investigation of
the chapters in the book.
The book aims to present to teachers and scholars of the philosophy of mathe-
matics and mathematics education current investigations and didactic proposals by
authors who conduct their activities in different countries.
As editor and co-editors, we have managed all the organization, sent invitations,
and established schedules for the work necessary so that the book could materialize.
We collaborated with the authors as follows: each of the co-editors conducted the
revision of a number of chapters; each of the authors revised one of the chapters;
Reviews 1 and 2 (R1 and R2) were sent to each respective author, keeping in mind
that after considering the observations they could accept or reject them. Each one of
the co-editors then conducted a third review of the chapters and implemented the
necessary adjustments in cooperation with the authors. The principle that guided the
inclusion of chapters was the book’s own proposal, previously known by authors.
Through our reading and analyses, we focused on the philosophical and educational
discussion present in the texts and respective foundations, as well as the internal
coherence and logical clarity of the articulations made. We do not take a position on
the ideas presented and articulated in each chapter, as we understand that their
maintenance is the responsibility of the respective authors.
The different chapters are organized into four parts, which deal important themes
concerning the philosophy of mathematical education: Part I – A Broad View of the
Philosophy of Mathematics Education; Part II – Philosophy of Mathematics
Education: Creativity and Educational Perspectives; Part III – Philosophy of Critical
Mathematics Education, Modelling and Education for Sustainable; Part IV –
Philosophy of Mathematics Education in Diverse Perspectives, Cultures, and
Environments. Those parts are introduced through an exposition of the understand-
ing of the themes treated, written by one of the editors of the book.
Each part is presented below with the sequence of chapters it comprises, the
respective author(s), and a brief summary through which the ideas considered are
articulated.
Preface vii
art I – A Broad View of the Philosophy

P
1 Paul Ernest
“The Ontological Problems of Mathematics and Mathematics Education” repre-

sents a movement in the process of understanding the constitution of mathematical
objects and of the mathematician himself, moving beyond the epistemological
aspects present in this constitution and focusing on the deontic modality. According
to this author, contrary to the traditional view that accounts of mathematical objects
are in epistemic or alethic modality expressing possibility, prediction, and truth, the
deontic modality of mathematical language indicates an obligation that becomes a
necessity. The chapter presents a synthesis of the author’s understanding of
Mathematics Education, of Mathematics, of Education, pointing out the great disci-
plinary fields that are interwoven in the constitution of Mathematics Education and
presenting its readers with his comprehensions of important and diverse subjects,
object of specific disciplines, such as Psychology, Linguistics, Sociology. The
authors he mentions are important in the scenario of Philosophy and Mathematics
Education.
2 Michael Otte and Mircea Radu
Otte and Radu, in “Scientific Revolutions: From Popper to Heisenberg,” compare

several seminal interpretations of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions
such as those of Karl Popper (1902-1994) and Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976),
emphasizing two theses of particular importance for the analysis they present. The
first states that theories are always underdetermined by the data they are supposed
to represent, so that theories appear as realities of their own. The authors explore
how this thesis can be upheld and proved fruitful while avoiding a nominalist inter-
pretation. The second thesis concerns a favorite commonplace in philosophical and
historical discussions of Renaissance. It states that the key element of the Renaissance
was recognizing the individual human subject as the central agency of cultural,
social, and economic progress. While discussing Kuhn’s conception and its recep-
tion, they explore some of the implications of these theses for a better understanding
of the debates concerning the development of science, mathematics, society, and
indeed education to this day. In this context, it is explained how aesthetic experience
emerges as a fundamental ingredient capable of bridging the gap between theory
and practice, nature and culture, between individual and social generality, and even
between the two theses proposed above. The discussion developed by them pro-
ceeds in terms of Peircean semiotics.
viii Preface
3 Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo
Bicudo, in “Questions That Are at the Core of a Mathematics Education Project,”

presents an essay focused on those questions. The author emphasizes that the proj-
ect of mathematics education needs to work by realizing philosophical thinking.
This chapter outlines a way of understanding the production of mathematics, as
understood by the western civilization, and its role in the constitution of scientific
and technological thinking present in the world we live in today; it points out the
urgency of not succumbing to the loss of meaning of life and of the world, as we are
immersed in a sea of explanations and predictions issued and supported by the sci-
entific and technological apparatuses; it is evidenced that mathematics education
can contribute to the accomplishment of this task in a unique manner, which is criti-
cal and urgent for humanity. In this chapter, a list of themes defined as important and
worthy of study and practice is not pointed out. Rather, the arguments intertwined
conduct an analytical and reflexive way to exercise and point out understandings
regarding the characteristics of scientific and technological work, which is sup-
ported by mathematics as understood by the western civilization, defending the
premise that within the scope of mathematics education it is necessary to compre-
hend such characteristics and integrate them into educational practices with ways
other cultures work mathematically.
4 Thomas Hausberger and Frédéric Patras
In chapter “Networking Phenomenology and Didactics: Horizons of Didactical

Milieus with a Focus on Abstract Algebra,” the authors work with Husserlian hori-
zons intertwined with notions from Brousseau’s Theory of Didactical Situations
(TDS). They present these as tools to analyze the shifts of attention and intercon-
nectedness of knowledge in learners attending to an abstract structure. Then, they
go forward in order to encompass a larger spectrum of horizons and methods in a
pioneering application in the context of university mathematics education, allowing
for a fine-grain analysis of the work of learners engaged in the elaboration of a
structuralist mathematical theory around the given structure. At the theoretical level
of frameworks, they contribute by combining/coordinating notions from TDS with
the perspective of phenomenology, in the spirit of networking. They believe that
such a dual framework may be applied in a large variety of contexts and educa-
tional levels.
Preface ix
5 Jonh Mason
“Specifying, Defining, Generalizing and Abstracting Mathematically All Seen as

Subtly Different Shifts of Attention” by John Mason focusses on mathematical
abstraction as a process, in relation to specifying, defining, and generalizing. In the
wake of his earlier investigations concerning symbols (signs), when he suggested in
1980 that these entities could be experienced initially as abstract in the sense of
being unconnected to other experiences, but over time could become perfectly con-
fidently manipulable, as they were concrete entities, and later, in 1989, when he
suggested that abstracting mathematically involves a “delicate” shift, not so much
in what is attended to, but in how it is attended to, he has led to point out implica-
tions for choices of pedagogical actions to initiate when working with learners. In
this chapter, he moves on and proposed that the acts of specifying, defining, and
generalizing also involve delicate shifts of attention, subtly different from each
other and from abstracting. He argues that through the use of multiple examples,
readers are invited to refine the distinctions they make in the form of their own
attention, so as to work more effectively with learner attention.
6 Steven Watson
“Toward a Systems Theory Approach to Mathematics Education” by Steven Watson

presents a systems approach to thinking about mathematics education. It is an
important text where the author aims to introduce mathematics education as a social
system to contemporary systems theory. As he states, he outlines some features of
the theory itself and the directions and themes which he takes up in his preliminary
inquiry into mathematics education. According to him, systems theory facilitates
the understanding of the social and cognitive dimensions within a theory of society
and, from this, a theory of mathematics education, as a social system of
communication.
7 Gerald A. Goldin
Goldin in chapter “On Mathematical Validity and Its Human Origins” suggests the
desirability of a fully integrated philosophy of mathematics education that builds on
several distinct, mutually compatible foundational pillars. These pillars have their
intellectual bases in different philosophical school of thought. The discussion
focuses on one aspect of those epistemological foundations – the interplay between
the human origins and uses of mathematics, and its objective truth and validity.
Various philosophical trends in education have centralized just one of these aspects,
often to the extent of denying or dismissing the other. He argues for their
x Preface
compatibility, maintaining that objective mathematical truth and the fact of cultur-
ally situated human mathematical invention should both be guiding teaching and
learning, with neither diminished in importance. Several meanings given to the
“why” of mathematics are discussed – logical and empirical reasons that underlie
mathematical truths and relationships, sociocultural and contextual reasons for
developing and teaching mathematics, and the in-the-moment experiences that
afforded students to motivate their study. Some sources of cultural relativism, his-
torical change, and “fallibility” in mathematics are identified, and the value of “mis-
takes” in powerful mathematical problem solving is highlighted. His goal is to argue
that an intellectually sound philosophy of mathematics education must incorporate
all of the aforementioned features of mathematics and its practice, dismissing none.
art II – Philosophy of Mathematics Education: Creativity

P
and Educational Perspectives
8 Bronisław Czarnocha
“Towards a philosophy of creativity in mathematics education,” by Bronisław

Czarnocha, addresses a rarely explored area, philosophy of creativity and its rele-
vance to mathematics education. The central question of this chapter – “What can
the practice of and research in creativity of mathematics education contribute to the
philosophy of creativity in mathematics education and possibly to the philosophy of
creativity in general?” – guided the author’s presentation and argumentation. The
innovative contributions made in the chapter are pertinent to the discussion about
creativity, how to define it, how to measure it, how to work with it in mathematics
classes.
9 William Baker
In the chapter “A Framework for Creative Insights within Internalization of

Mathematics,” William Baker analyzes cognitive changes during moments of
insight realized within a math classroom. He makes his argument explicit by point-
ing to previous studies by authors significant to the subject, such as Piaget and
Vygotsky. He poses that constructivism is arguably the prevailing theory of mathe-
matics educational research; based upon the work of Piaget, it posits that human
knowledge is built up through an individual’s reflection and abstraction upon their
solution activity. He continues saying that social constructivists, in contrast, fre-
quently use the work of Vygotsky focused on the internalization of knowledge
within social discourse. In this chapter, Baker takes up these approaches and inte-
grates them into a framework based upon the work of Koestler to study and analyze
Preface xi
cognitive changes during moments of insight realized within a math classroom. Two
dominant themes underlying his attempt are: first, classroom discourse is the unit of
analysis for both student development and reflection upon pedagogy, and second,
Vygotsky’s framework while ideally situated for analysis of classroom instruction
is lacking in detail of the actual process of internalization.
10 Mitsuru Matsushima
Mitsuru Matsushima’s chapter “A Reconsideration of Appropriation from a

Sociocultural Perspective” pursues the following questions: Why does interaction in
the learning community deepen mathematics learning? How does individual learn-
ing contribute to the learning community through dialogue and deepen mathematics
learning? He works out with these questions from a sociocultural perspective, con-
sidering them jointly. In this chapter, he offers a reconsideration from a sociocul-
tural perspective, basing his discussion on two appropriation features of previous
studies, dynamic composition and mutual composition, and an extended sign appro-
priation and use model. He deepens his investigation about the concept of internal-
ization and articulates ideas in order to answer the questions posed by him: “Why
does dialogue deepen mathematics learning?” and “Will mathematics learning
deepen without dialogue?”.
11 Regina D. Möller and Peter Collignon
“Towards a Philosophy of Algorithms as an Element of Mathematics Education” is

the theme focused by the authors in this chapter. They consider that nowadays the
concept of algorithms is used in a rather broad range, since many subject matters
refer to this notion, and they shape it along the respective desired usefulness or
requirements. They argue that algorithms are one of several fundamental mathemat-
ical ideas, and they structure the content of math classes throughout the school
years, that is, the primary and the secondary levels. They ponder that their roles and
their importance for mathematics education have undergone substantial changes
especially during the last 30 years. They understand that these changes give reason
to investigate and reflect upon this emerging phenomenon and ask for analyzing the
contemporary need in actual math classes as a response to everyday life experiences
related to algorithms often hidden in technical devices. They go further in the line
of their investigations and in this chapter, from a philosophical point of view, they
pursue new questions to be considered within the framework of (post-)modernism
and within a constructivist approach.
xii Preface
12 Małgorzata Marciniak
Marciniak in “The times of transitions in the modern education” points toward

expanded professional development for teacher education, in that she understood
that living and working during these times of transitions in the modern education
may be extremely confusing for teachers of all levels since the education they
received and were taught to provide is not what they are required to perform. As she
says, this was particularly exposed during the pandemic when thousands of teachers
worldwide were forced to teach remotely regardless of their digital skills. She con-
siders the questions of the character and shape of this development remains open,
and so in this work she tries to analyze a few pivoting moments in the history of
education to follow up on the ideas of Thomas Kuhn as presented in his book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Here the discussion is applied to the structure of
the revolutions of education with the pandemic being one of them. The question:
what will be the long-term influences of the pandemic on the teaching and learning,
remains open and fully credible answers can be provided only with time. She will
try to answer this question based on short-term recent experiences and observations.
Weaving articulations between Kuhn’s thinking about scientific revolutions and
educational theory is an important point in this chapter.
13 Yenealem Ayalew
“Some Examples of Mathematical Paradoxes with Implications for the Professional

Development of Teachers” addresses some clever mathematical paradoxes that
challenge or trouble traditional interpretations of mathematical results; it uses
examples as evidence for the underlying argument. For instance, it elaborates the
sum of one and one with possible results 0,1,2,3,10, or ∞. The discussions were
made based on an eclectic position of the philosophies of mathematics. A question
on the possibility of bringing qualitative mathematical relations into classroom con-
text is posed in the middle of the text. Generally, the chapter deals on what creative
imagination looks like, at the level of mathematics, mathematics teaching, mathe-
matics teacher education, etc. Thus, it appears to be a theoretical exploration of the
subjectivity of mathematical development and the professional development of
mathematics educators. A multi-stage collaborative work model is also forwarded.
Preface xiii
art III – Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education,

P
Modelling and Education for Sustainable
14 Ole Skovsmose
Skovsmose’s chapter, “A Performative Interpretation of Mathematics,” suggests a

performative interpretation of mathematics, inspired by a performative interpreta-
tion of language. The author states that according to this interpretation, any form of
mathematics is intrinsically linked to potential or actual actions. His interpretation,
as he says, is elaborated upon with respect to both advanced mathematics and school
mathematics. He highlights that any kind of mathematics exercises a symbolic
power, which brings to the forefront the ethical dimension of a philosophy for math-
ematics. Any kind of action is in need of ethical reflections, and so specifically are
mathematics-based actions. He points out that ethical reflections concern the pos-
sible impact of mathematics, the different groups of people that might be affected
by such actions, the possible acting subjects that might be hidden behind the curtain
of mathematics, the possible intentions behind the action, and the ethical reflections
themselves. He concludes that, taken together, ethical reflections concern how sym-
bolic acts rooted in mathematics might form our life-worlds.
15 Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy
The chapter “Reflective Knowing in the Mathematics Classroom: The Potential of

Philosophical Inquiry for Critical Mathematics Education,” by Nadia Stoyanova
Kennedy, brings philosophizing to the very activity of teaching and learning math-
ematics. The text explains how to understand the process of philosophizing, which
includes analytical and reflective thinking about issues concerning the way of pro-
ducing mathematical knowledge, advancing to questions of ethical and epistemo-
logical nature. The author proposes ways for the teacher to work in the classroom
with her students, keeping the dialogue alive in a collaborative way. The advance
goes beyond the clear explicitness of the understanding of philosophizing, as it goes
into the details of how and what can be worked out in the classroom.
16 Uwe Schürmann
Schürmann, in chapter “Mathematical Modelling: A Philosophy of Science

Perspective,” questions the separation between mathematics and reality or the “rest
of the world,” which is often found in mathematics education research on model-
ling, against the background of the syntactic and the semantic view of models and
theories. He argues that the syntactic view more accurately captures the connection
xiv Preface
between mathematics and reality by distinguishing between theoretical and obser-

vational terms of a theory. Moreover, as he points out, the distinction provides a tool
to analyze students’ utterances more precisely. He links (analytic) philosophy of
science and mathematics education research on mathematical modelling in the
classroom. He does so because as this subject matter is not directly related to philo-
sophical findings on models in sciences, it is not directly concerned with questions
of a philosophical nature. Even so, it always deals with reality and so it carries
underlying ontological questions.
17 Hui Chuan Li
In the chapter “Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Mathematics

Education: Reconfiguring and Rethinking the Philosophy of Mathematics for the
21st Century,” Hui Chuan Li discusses the disparity between the current trends in
mathematics education and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)
approaches. The author argues toward a call for reconfiguring and rethinking the
philosophy of mathematics for twenty-first-century learning priorities, as he
detected a stalemate between ESD educational propositions and the growing trend
in mathematics education toward teaching to the tests, which has become an increas-
ingly common phenomenon in many education systems across the world.
art IV – Philosophy of Mathematics Education in Diverse

P
Perspectives, Cultures, and Environments
1 8 Antonio Miguel, Elizabeth Gomes Souza

and Carolina Tamayo
“Asé o’u toryba ‘ara îabi’õnduara!”. In this chapter, the authors aim to problematize
the alleged uniqueness and universality of Western logical-formal mathematics and
the philosophies that support it with the purpose of deconstructing this belief as a
problem, and not exactly defending a new philosophy of mathematics or mathemat-
ics education, but a therapeutic-decolonial way of educating and of educating one-
self mathematically through the non-disciplinary problematization of normative
cultural practices. They argue that any practice aimed at fulfilling normative social
purposes in a way of life can be seen as a mathematical language game in
Wittgenstein’s sense. And that, by extension, the mathematical practices, and the
ways in which they affect the different forms of life in the contemporary world,
must be the focus of the therapeutic problematization of a mathematics education
that intends to be decolonial. Six persons participate in this therapeutic debate:
Oiepé, Mokoi, Mosapyr, Irundyk, Mbó, and Opá kó mbó. Their names correspond,
Preface xv
respectively, to the numerals one, two, three, four, five, and ten in the ancient lan-
guage Tupi, today considered one of the two most important linguistic branches of
the hundreds of different languages currently spoken by indigenous communities in
Brazil. Other remote interlocutors are invited to participate in the debate.
19 Maurício Rosa
In the chapter “Mathematics Education and Ubuntu Philosophy: The Analysis of

Antiracist Mathematics Activity With Digital Technologies,” Maurício Rosa inves-
tigates how mathematics education can encourage/provoke the understanding/con-
stitution of social responsibility of mathematics teachers and students, specifically,
in relation to social issues such as structural racism that inhabits our reality, includ-
ing educational ones. His research question is: How does one discuss racism in a
mathematics class with Digital Technologies in a way that mathematical concepts
support the discussion? This investigation he conducts is guided by his understand-
ing that currently, from the polarization of worldviews, it is important that education
with mathematics teachers highlights the political and social dimensions of this
form/a(c)tion, so that mathematics is a reflective resource, language or field of study
articulated with Digital Technologies (DT) and with questions related to these
dimensions. Given these considerations and their questioning, he analyzes a math-
ematical activity with Digital Technologies that discusses colorism, and uses the
African philosophy called Ubuntu as an analytical resource, which does not con-
ceive the existence of a being independent of the other, but of a “being” who thinks,
acts and lives with others, be-being, that is, a becoming-being that promotes a trans-
formation in reality from its agency with others, with nature, with life. As he points
out, he found interesting pedagogical possibilities, which under a decolonial per-
spective demarcate equity and social justice arising from a class that takes DT and
mathematics as a basis.
20 Min Bahadur Shrestha
“Philosophy, Rigor, and Axiomatics in Mathematics: Imposed or Intimately

Related?”. In this chapter, Min Bahadur Shrestha shows his movement to examine
how philosophy, rigor, and axiomatics are related, as he was motivated by the two
main tendencies of mathematical development in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, which he understands as having to do with rigor and formalization. He argues
that rigor and formalization took place on axiomatic basis leading to more abstrac-
tion and that Euclidean type of an axiomatic model became a model of mathematics
even for constructively developed analysis. He goes on to point out his reasoning,
arguing that although rigor and axiomatic method differ, and rigor does not need to
be based on axiomatic method, in practice, that basis has been required for
xvi Preface
mathematical validity. He observes that among different interpretations made about

it, some have explained it as a mathematical necessity, while others have attributed
it to the philosophical underpinnings of formalism and foundationalism. From these
arguments, he goes on to clearly state his argument by pointing out that, for him, it
seems that philosophy has distant but decisive impression on the nature of mathe-
matical knowledge, whereas rigor and axiomatic seems to be relatively internal to
mathematics. However, because such trends have mostly been associated with
European tradition, he argues, they need to be examined in the light of non-European
traditions, including Hindu mathematical traditions, which have made significant
contributions to mathematics without any axiomatic proof or philosophical pre-
sumption of absolute certainty.
21 Karla Sepúlveda Obreque and Javier Lezama Andalon
In the chapter “Idealism and materialism in mathematics teaching, an analysis from

the socio epistemological theory,” the authors aim to reflect on the influence of ide-
alism and materialism, as philosophical currents, on the school curriculum and the
work of teaching mathematics. They take social epistemological theory as the theo-
retical framework to guide their reflection, as well as to analyze the information
obtained through direct observation and unstructured interviews with Chilean
teachers.
22 Thomas E. Ricks
In the chapter “Cognitive and Neurological Evidence of Non-Human Animal

Mathematics, and Implications for Mathematics Education,” Thomas Rick focuses
on a challenging issue for the mathematics educator Community. He reviews recent
scientific evidence legitimizing animal mathematics. He states that, in particular,
numerous cognitive and neurological studies suggest that animals mathematize like
humans. Such findings run counter belief held by many in mathematics education
that mathematics is a uniquely human enterprise. He concludes by suggesting pos-
sible benefits animal-mathematics studies may hold for the work of mathematics
education.
Preface xvii
Part V – Concluding
23 Bronisław Czarnocha and Małgorzata Marciniak
“Living in the Ongoing Moment” is a summarizing chapter. Czarnocha and

Marciniak, co-editors of this book, wrote it as a moment of reflection on the topics
brought by the authors in the current, just assembled book and a sudden, yet some-
how expected, appearance of an advanced AI chatbot. Having no answers, they keep
asking questions hoping that they will serve as an inspiration for more philosophy
so much needed in mathematics education today.
São Paulo, Brazil Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

November 2022
Introduction
Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy of Mathematics Education approaches the

philosophy of mathematics education in a forward movement, analyzing, reflecting,
and proposing significant contemporary themes in the field of mathematics educa-
tion. The four parts that comprise the book share this view of the themes that inter-
pret the investigative procedures and studies, as well as the didactic-pedagogical
practices conducted in the area. Although the four parts are dedicated to specific
subjects, the themes treated are intertwined and often displayed as oppositions,
feeding the dialectic of thought that questions and seeks analyzes which signifi-
cantly support arguments that advance, either through clarification, or proposals for
new topics to be researched, or educational proposals.
We are a group of four researchers who dedicated ourselves to organizing this
book, since ICME 14, which took place in 2021 in Shanghai, China. Four different
people with different views. However, the four remain united by the common goal
of bringing to the community of mathematics educators the diversity and strength of
the ways of understanding mathematics and mathematics education, through critical
and reflective analyses, present in the different papers discussed by TSG 56.
Thus, we believe that it is difficult or even impossible to amalgamate these four
voices. Therefore, we decided that each of us, in their own way of thinking and
explaining their understandings, would be responsible for presenting the introduc-
tion to one of the parts with which they were most familiarized, due to their own
investigations and areas of interest. These presentations materialized as a brief text
called “Introducing the theme of Part X.” Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo wrote
the introduction to Part I; Bronisław Czarnocha wrote the introduction to Part II;
Małgorzata Marciniak wrote the introduction to Part III; and Maurício Rosa the
introduction to Part IV. The parts are presented below as well as the respective intro-
duction of the themes covered, in order to expose the reader the logic of the organi-
zation of such parts which evidences our way of seeing the content of different
chapters.
xix
xx Introduction
Introducing the Theme of Part I
In this first part of the book, we take a comprehensive look at mathematics educa-
tion, resulting from philosophical thinking regarding what is understood by the
authors of the different chapters in this book, which are proposed for analysis and
reflection by those who operate such education.
The topic addressed in this part focuses on essays developed by their authors
based on extensive investigations and debates that have taken place throughout their
lives, while they immerse themselves in the philosophy of mathematics education.
Proposals are presented regarding possible ways of understanding mathematics
education, based on work already published but considered for reflection within the
horizon of mathematics education. While reading them, I feel they go deep into top-
ics already clarified and reviewed, advancing toward contributing with views that
are articulated in organic units and involve more complex levels, seen from the
perspective of a theorization work.
It is a movement that demonstrates the commitment to lead mathematics educa-
tion beyond the aspects concerning themes regarding teaching and learning mathe-
matics, when, for example, learning theories and proposals for ways of teaching are
brought up, as well as topics related to the history of mathematics, philosophy,
education, and other significant issues for this area, seeking to penetrate the intrica-
cies of the ontological, epistemological, axiological aspects lying at the core of
philosophy. The discipline imposed by the rigor of this search contributes to an
attitude of constantly questioning the sense and meaning of what is said, both in
one’s authorial productions and those published in this area. Questions are asked,
such as: What does this text say about education? About mathematics education?
About mathematics? About teaching? About knowledge? About scientific knowl-
edge and natural knowledge? About ways to critically understand scientific produc-
tion? About ethical and aesthetic aspects that are shown between the lines of texts,
research, and practices experienced among mathematics teachers and researchers?
Why teach mathematics to all people, in the manner it is inserted in the school cur-
ricula of the Western world societies in recent centuries? In what direction should
one go when performing mathematics education, that is, from a teleological point of
view, what are the purposes assumed as valid, in order to guide the realization of this
education?
Questions of this kind underlie the texts presented in this Part I and are treated in
a unique way by different authors. The diversity of views and authors mentioned is
evident in the chapters presented. Likewise, there is diversity of paths traveled
toward the theorization pointed out above. This shows the strength of the area that
is revealed from multiple perspectives. It is important to point out that all authors
perform a rigorous exercise committed to issues which are central to philosophy,
whether naming them explicitly or not.
The logic of the sequence of chapters goes from broader questions placed through
reflections of the author’s own work, moving on to texts that intertwine, in an articu-
lated way, different philosophies of important authors such as Thomas Kuhn, Karl
Introduction xxi
Popper, and Werner Heisenberg, to authors who assume specific philosophical

views, such as phenomenological and hermeneutic views, understood as critical for
the movement of philosophically thinking mathematics education; as well as texts
that focus on actions specific to human knowledge, with emphasis on mathematical
knowledge, emphasizing abstraction as a process, and explaining actions that per-
form this process, such as specifying, defining, generalizing, abstracting mathemat-
ically; including texts that highlight the importance of analyzing and understanding
mathematical education from the perspective of a system; and also a text that argues
that an intellectually sound philosophy of mathematics education must incorporate
various philosophical trends in education without centralizing just one of their
aspects while denying or dismissing others.
These chapters challenge readers and invite them to follow the paths of the
thought exposed, certainly raising other questions, and thinking from the perspec-
tive of their own pursuits and concerns.
Introducing the Theme of Part II
Part II develops beginnings of the philosophy of creativity in mathematics educa-

tion. It contains three chapters which concern creativity directly and three chapters
which touch upon it tangentially. All of them contribute to our understanding of this
fundamental yet elusive phenomenon of creativity. In this short introductory sec-
tion, we explicitly focus on that common thread. At the same time, we discover
interesting connections between the chapters which suggests new questions to the
emerging Philosophy of Creativity in Mathematics Education (PCME).
PCME is the emerging subdomain of consideration within our profession, which
we hope will provide us with hints when, where, and how we can facilitate students’
creativity and through its expression let them experience its power both along the
cognitive and affective dimensions. Creativity and innovation have become the buzz
words within the professional business circles. Against that background, Bronislaw
Czarnocha’s chapter “Towards a Philosophy of Creativity in Mathematics
Education” addresses rarely explored area, philosophy of creativity and its rele-
vance to mathematics education. The central question of this chapter – “What can
the practice of and research in creativity of mathematics education contribute to the
philosophy of creativity in mathematics education and possibly to the philosophy of
creativity in general?” – guided the author’s presentation and argumentation.
Through the bisociation that is the theory of Aha! Moment, seen here as the act of
creation following Koestler (1964), the author arrives at the conclusion that creativ-
ity should be at the basis of mathematics curriculum design. Regina Möller and
Peter Collignon’s chapter “Towards a Philosophy of Algorithms as an Element of
Mathematics Education” arrive at a similar assertion but from the point of view of
the role of algorithms in mathematics education. The authors point to the dramatic
change in that role occurring within last several decades, both in our profession as
well as in the world. As an introduction to the subject, the authors provide an
xxii Introduction
interesting historical sketch, which includes the description of the recent changes,
which employed algorithms is daily life, in particular in electronic calculators and
computers. The contemporary user however, doesn’t know about the existence of
the algorithms at all. The main issue in question is about the impact of algorithms
on math classes and phenomena that were completely unknown until recently. Since
those new possibilities involve fascinating opportunities and enormous threats at the
same time, the authors assert that the concept of algorithms should be in the center
of didactical considerations. And that brings philosophical/didactical question:
Both proposals, to organize the curriculum with creativity at its base and with the
algorithm at the center of didactic attention, when implemented together lead us to
the philosophical question: What is the relationship between creativity and an algo-
rithm, or creativity and a procedure? Following on its heels comes the didactic
question: How do we organize classroom teaching based on these two, ultimately
antithetical concepts?
Equally interesting relationship exists between William Baker’s chapter “A
Framework for Creative Insights Within Internalization of Mathematics” and
Mitsuru Matsushima’s chapter “A Reconsideration of Appropriation from a
Sociocultural Perspective” both of which include a similar goal but approach it from
a different, one could even say, opposite points of view. The goal is to identify cre-
ative process, creativity within sociocultural approach.
Baker supports himself by a recently created concept of integrated bisociative
frame grounded in Piagetian constructivism and Koestler’s bisociation, and he
shows the existence of such frames within internalization. That clarifies where and
how creativity is found within internalization. Bisociative frame is one of the central
concepts of the creativity theory of Aha! Moment presented in the Czarnocha chap-
ter; it plays the role of the “discoverer” of creativity. Baker’s efforts in the chapter
are the continuation of Baker (2021), where the coordination of bisociation with
Piagetian constructive generalization led to the formulation of the integrated biso-
ciative frame – a new tool to identify moments of creative insight within student
learning. Identification of such integrated bisociative frames within both Piagetian
and Vygotskian approaches is very important. It suggests that a bisociative creativ-
ity underlies both of the approaches and can serve as their unifying principle.
Moreover, the discussion of the close relationship between interiorization – the
characteristics of Piagetian approaches – and internalization – the characteristic of
Vygotskian approach – culminates the chapter.
Matsushima’s chapter “A Reconsideration of Appropriation from a Sociocultural
Perspective” pursues the following questions: Why does interaction in the learning
community deepen mathematics learning? He addresses two fundamental questions
within the sociocultural approach: Why does interaction in the learning community
deepen mathematics learning of its members? How does individual learning con-
tribute to the learning community through dialogue and deepen mathematics
learning?
The chapter approaches the common goal of identifying creativity through the
sociocultural vantage point of appropriation. He uses the newly introduced concepts
of dynamic composition and mutual composition during the process of
Introduction xxiii
appropriation between an individual learner and the community of learners to iden-

tify three problems within internalization showing at the same time how these new
concepts can deal with the described difficulties. And creativity is found possible
during the appropriation as a deviation from the original concept to be appropriated.
Such deviations are a manifestation of gaps between the concepts of the learners
interacting with each other and the concepts of the learning community as seen by
each learner. That means that bisociative frame is created by two different frames of
reference of individuals between whom the deviation takes place.
Creative imagination of our profession is the common aspect of Ayalev and
Marciniak chapters, especially seen at their sociocultural background. While for
Ayalev it is the principle of the proposed professional development for teachers, for
Marciniak it is the reality of the rapid transformation from face-to-face to online
mode. She points out to several published reports from the time of pandemic which
emphasized the critical role of creative imagination in the rapid transformation for
which majority of teachers and students were not prepared. The chapter of
Małgorzata Marciniak “The Times of Transitions in the Modern Education”
addresses very deep revolutionary changes in education that are taking place at pres-
ent due to the impact of pandemic as well as due to the growth of the role of Internet.
The author recalls the incredibly high speed with which both teachers/faculty and
students had to change the mode of teaching and learning from face-to-face to
online Internet platforms. The process of change included significant difficulties for
students, parents, and teachers leading ultimately to lowering students’ passing
rates, yet at the same time, it offered significant creative possibilities. Creativity
involved in solving presented problems, when integrated with the creative possibili-
ties of Internet, may signal that creativity itself is becoming the central underlying
feature of contemporary pivotal point in education. The author places that present
moment as the most recent pivotal point within a sequence of similar pivotal revo-
lutionary changes in education’s history: introduction of compulsory education,
transformation from religious to secular schooling, and creation of public educa-
tion. She points to the fundamental role of education of females brought by the para-
digm of public education. Yenealem Ayalev’s chapter “Some Examples of
Mathematical Paradoxes with Implications for the Professional Development of
Teachers” investigates the relationship between mathematics, teacher, and educa-
tion as the basis for the professional education of teachers. He emphasizes that vital
component of that relationship is creative imagination. He advocates the socio/cul-
tural approach to creative imagination, and especially in the context of mathemati-
cal paradoxes, whose both posing and solving invokes large dose of creativity. The
author finds the essence of mathematics as the science of computation and opera-
tion, as the provision of skills to learn and create shared meanings by way of social-
izing the field of mathematics. An excellent example of that multi-meaning which
can be attributed to one mathematical concept leads the author to the analysis of
known mathematical paradoxes, which through history have led to many creative
ideas and discoveries. One of them has been the 5th postulate of Euclid whose many
possible meanings have led to the creation of non-Euclidean geometries. Another
one is the collection of different interpretations and solutions to “1 + 1 = ?”, which
xxiv Introduction
illuminate the role of interpretation as well as existence of multiple truths in

mathematics.
Introducing the Theme of Part III
Young children often ask for the purpose of live, but when discouraged, they stop
and engage in other activities. Similarly, young researchers frequently inquire about
the meaning of mathematics and its place in education. But when the answer is not
found, they tend to shift to other, more rewarding topics. In this part of the book, the
authors stubbornly search for the answers of revised and reformulated questions
about the meaning of mathematics, its place in education and reality. Unfortunately,
mathematics is nowadays taught as the universal and unquestionable truth not
responding to the needs inquisitive and future oriented minds. Even college students
of engineering programs frequently express their surprise when they find out that
their teachers do research in mathematics beyond what is already known.
In modern mathematics, classroom logicism, formalism, and intuitionism are
already well-established dimensions. In his chapter, Ole Skovsmose finds ways for
expanding these dimensions and introduces performative interpretation of mathe-
matics as a niche in mathematical ethics. He justifies the needs for adding this new
dimension to the contemporary mathematics as a crucial factor in creation of the
life-world. In his works, performative interpretation based on mathematical results
plays a key role in creating reality. At the same time, Skovsmose points out the new
roles of mathematical algorithms in political, social, and financial decision making
on a large scale and emphasizes the urgent needs for ethical discussions about
such uses.
It is worthwhile to mention that the aspects of ethics in terms of performative
interpretation go far beyond well-known mathematical literacy (sometimes called
numeracy) denoted by further authors as mathemacy. Ole gives an example of how
formalism (language) affects the discussion using mathematical modelling. In his
view, a choice for a particular model shapes the discussion, for example about cli-
mate change and affects the conclusions. No doubts, the way the data is cleansed,
analyzed, and used is important for the future shape of our global society. The fact
that the language influences the content of conversation is well known to bilingual
people. While it may be intuitively clear that the choice of language shapes spoken
or written exchange of ideas, this may be less obvious for pure wordless thinking.
Especially when we would like to see thinking as a process is entirely owned by us.
But surprisingly so, some, thoughts, including mathematical thoughts are highly
dependent on the language.
Practical classroom applications of performative interpretation in mathematics
classroom are described in the chapter written by Nadia Stoyanova-Kennedy. She
suggests that inquiry joined with collaborative group work may be the best way for
creating a suitable environment for critical and creative thought. Stoyanova-
Kennedy points out that the role of math in the society has been unclear. On the one
Introduction xxv
hand, math skills are valued and used in many aspects of human life (banking, deci-
sion making, cryptography, coding, etc.), but on the other hand, students of all ages
and nationalities fear math and often sincerely dislike it. This leaves math educators
in a century-lasting dilemma of how to connect mathematics with happy feelings
and natural interactions of humans with the reality. Here mathemacy comes as a
rescue as it is designed to build interactions between the mind and the reality. At the
same time, Stoyanova-Kennedy warns that mathemacy, if engaged only for techni-
cal or mathematical understanding, will not contribute to the growth and develop-
ment of modern society. Thus, she calls for well-framed and properly facilitated
classroom discussions that aim for building ethical and social awareness of students
of all ages. Stoyanova-Kennedy gives an example of discussion about mathematical
modelling which could contain questions of the type: Should a model describe real-
ity with a prefect precision? Why mathematical models are need? Can they describe
everything? How do we know how much to trust them?
Uwe Schürmann notices that even in courses about mathematical modeling, cal-
culations are heavily overrepresented not leaving any time and attention for such
fundamental epistemological and ontological questions crucial for the role of mod-
els in creating reality. He points serious shortages in such courses:
• Lack of empirical experience of mathematical modeling, i.e., collecting the data,
finding the parameters of the models, comparing the results from the models to
the actual outcomes, and explaining the obvious existence of discrepancies
• Social separation: Who builds the model and for what purpose, how are the
results used and with what intentions?
• Ontological separation: How does the model contribute to existing view of
nature, for example, one differential equation tends to appear in many different
areas and describe unrelated phenomena, pendulum equation describes not only
vibration but level of sugar and insulin, what does it mean to science? How does
this discovery contribute to our view of reality?
Education with such separation will not create responsible citizens prepared for
challenges of the future. Thus, mathematics education urgently needs a revision in
its paradigms. Hui-Chuan Li brings as an option UNESCO-supported ideas of
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) which has three aspects: economic
growth, social inclusion, environmental protection. He emphasizes that in mathe-
matics curriculum, these aspects may not be actual topics. But they should influence
the way of implementation of math topics in the class activities. Li gives an example
of own research topics related to ESD introduced as workshops for his students in
Scotland. Topics include biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable energy (wind
turbines and biodiesel) and the workshops contain non-traditional activities such as:
respectful debates and discussions, reflections, sharing opinions, and points of view
of the value of mathematics and its limitations. At this point, Li rightfully rises
another issue for discussion related to testing in math classes. As he points out,
standardized testing influenced teachers to focus on teaching just for these tests sup-
porting the opinion that the style and content of testing affects the way of teaching.
Opposite holds as well, i.e., the style of testing should mirror the teaching. Thus,
xxvi Introduction
bringing discussions and debates to the curriculum should influence the way of test-
ing. In my own teaching experience, written reflections on mathematical results
rescued validity of online testing during the pandemic. This experience significantly
changed my view on tests and testing in math courses.
As a conclusion, STEM education has been drawing increasing attention as it
became more politically relevant due to its role in technology and decision making
needed for the future workforce. Mathematics curriculum makes attempts to accom-
modate such needs by introducing problem solving, which, in Li’s opinion, is insuf-
ficient for preparing students to become critical citizens of future reality. Thus, at
the end of his chapter, Li calls for culturally and ethnically sensitive mathematical
teaching.
Introducing the Theme of Part IV
Part IV of this book brings chapters that deal with the philosophy of mathematics
education in different perspectives, cultures, and environments. This means that the
chapters that make up this part undertake to discuss, to reflect, to reflect on, for
example, colonial mathematics problematizing the supposed singularity and univer-
sality of this western logical-formal mathematics and these philosophies that sustain
it for the purpose of deconstructing the belief of a single and universal mathematics
as a problem. Therefore, highlighting the ways of doing mathematics of different
peoples, valuing it, is a movement that arises as a potential restorative of the histori-
cal invisibility of different cultures.
In this perspective, the conception of culture is understood as a whole way of
life, its common meanings, to designate the arts, learning, the processes of discov-
ery, and the creative effort (Williams, 2015). Also, according to Eagleton (2003),
based on the etymological meaning of the word that comes from the Latin colere,
the term culture is used to designate distinct things such as habitation (in the words
“colony” and “colonist”) and religious worship (“worship”). It is also used to man-
ual labor. The original meaning of word “culture” is “crop” or “agricultural cultiva-
tion” and, thus, what previously designated a particular material activity, takes an
abstract meaning, which is imposed as the general cultivation of the intellect, in the
individual sense and also in the collective. Thus, this part of the book highlights the
ideas of freedom and determinism, activity and resistance, change and identity,
what is given and what is created (Eagleton, 2003) in the mathematical production
of different peoples and environments and what can be taught to empower mathe-
matical doing and equity of human beings. Therefore, the philosophy of mathemat-
ics education in various cultural perspectives, for example, seeks the individual and
collective growth of what has already been cultivated or that will be, either by itself
or by the group to which one belongs, in a dialectical movement between what is
said natural and what is said artificial, according to rules agreed by the group itself,
and between what we do to the world and what the world does to us in an insepa-
rable flow, which presents itself in proper act of educating by mathematics.
Introduction xxvii
This part of the book assumes possibilities of defense in a decolonial way of

educating mathematically and educating by mathematics through the non-
disciplinary problematization of normative cultural practices. The discussion of
how mathematics education can stimulate/provoke the understanding/constitution
of the social responsibility of teachers and mathematics students is raised.
Specifically, in relation to social issues such as structural racism that inhabits our
reality, including educational, there is a movement that highlights the African phi-
losophy Ubuntu, evidencing ways in which mathematics can sustain the under-
standing of respect for the collective. The chapters promote reflection on decolonial
ways of educating by mathematics. Thus, some interesting mathematical practices
are pointed out, which from a decolonial perspective demarcation equity and social
justice and can be performed in recurrent educational spaces.
Nevertheless, the understanding that Hindu mathematical traditions, for exam-
ple, have made significant contributions to European mathematics even without any
axiomatic proof (of the way these tests are (im)put by the coloniality of knowledge)
or philosophical presumption of absolute certainty (likewise), can raise empower-
ment flights to various groups of students from minorities (black) in mathematical
educational spaces.
In Latin American terms, there is a movement around social epistemology as a
theory of educational mathematics. This epistemology studies didactic phenomena
related to mathematical knowledge, assuming the legitimacy of all forms of knowl-
edge, whether popular, technical, or formal, because it considers that they, as a
whole, constitute human wisdom.
Also, as an innovative perspective, this part of the book presents a discussion on
recent scientific evidence that legitimizes the mathematics of animals. Cognitive
and neurological studies are indicated that suggest that animals mathematize like
humans and this destabilizes the common belief that mathematics is an exclusively
human enterprise.
However, the disarticulations of universal truths are present in this part of the
book, because, although the meanings we attribute to a given situation or object are
individual and subjective, they have their origins and their importance in the culture
in which they are created. Therefore, in this cultural locus is the guarantee of nego-
tiation and communication of these senses in order to characterize meanings
(“agreed” or “(im)posed”). What matters, in cognitive terms is that meanings
become the basis for cultural exchange. In the symbolic systems of culture, there is
a possible realization of what is understood together and what can be communicated
in terms of eurocentrical ideas. Thus, this part of the book seeks to debate issues that
do not fit, at first, into a formal, academic, white, and Eurocentric mathematics. In
other words, there is no framing of diverse mathematical thoughts in an order of
hegemonic and European structure, because these different mathematical forms of
thinking are outside the characteristics of rigor and axiomatic proof, previously con-
ceived in history by the dominant culture. However, the proper mathematical way of
thinking of the dominant culture is philosophically questioned and other forms are
discussed in the subsequent chapters of this part of the book. These debates, in turn,
xxviii Introduction
open different possibilities from those commonly defended and potentiate knowl-
edge that can often be considered as decolonial ways of thinking.
At the end, concluding the treatise on the different parts of the book, there is
Chap. 23, understood as a reflection on the topics brought up by the authors. It is an
essay in which two of the co-editors, Dr. Czarnocha and Dr. Marciniak, carry out a
review of the book, highlighting its unity understood as based on philosophical
thinking and the way of proceeding of the Philosophy of Mathematics Education,
projecting inquiries visualized in the horizon opened by the AI chatbot.
Rio Claro, Brazil Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

New York, NY, USA Bronisław Czarnocha
Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Maurício Rosa
Long Island, NY, USA Małgorzata Marciniak
Contents
Part I A Broad View of the Philosophy of Mathematics Education

1 he Ontological Problems of Mathematics and Mathematics
T
Education�� 3
Paul Ernest
2 cientific Revolutions: From Popper to Heisenberg �� 43
S
Michael Otte and Mircea Radu
3 uestions That Are at the Core of a Mathematics Education
Q
“Project” �� 63
4 Networking Phenomenology and Didactics: Horizon
of Didactical Milieus with a Focus on Abstract Algebra�� 87
Thomas Hausberger and Frédéric Patras
5 Specifying Defining, Generalising and Abstracting
Mathematically All Seen as Subtly Different Shifts of Attention�� 103
John Mason
6 oward a Systems Theory Approach to Mathematics Education �� 125
T
Steven Watson
7 n Mathematical Validity and Its Human Origins�� 141
O
Gerald A. Goldin
Part II Philosophy of Mathematics Education: Creativity

and Educational Perspectives
8 owards a Philosophy of Creativity in Mathematics Education �� 163
T
Bronisław Czarnocha
xxix
xxx Contents
9 A Framework for Creative Insights Within Internalization

of Mathematics �� 183
William Baker
10 Reconsideration of Appropriation from a Sociocultural
A
Perspective�� 209
Mitsuru Matsushima
11 Towards a Philosophy of Algorithms as an Element
of Mathematics Education�� 227
Regina D. Möller and Peter Collignon
12 he Times of Transitions in the Modern Education �� 239
T
13 Some Examples of Mathematical Paradoxes with Implications
for the Professional Development of Teachers�� 253
Yenealem Ayalew
Part III Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education, Modelling

and Education for Sustainable
14 Performative Interpretation of Mathematics�� 269
A
Ole Skovsmose
15 Reflective Knowing in the Mathematics Classroom:
The Potential of Philosophical Inquiry for Critical Mathematics
Education�� 293
Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy
16 athematical Modelling: A Philosophy of Science Perspective�� 309
M
Uwe Schürmann
17 ducation for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Mathematics
E
Education: Reconfiguring and Rethinking the Philosophy
of Mathematics for the Twenty-First Century�� 331
Hui-Chuan Li
Part IV Philosophy of Mathematics Education in Diverse

Perspectives, Cultures, and Environments
18 sé O’u Toryba ‘Ara Îabi’õnduara!�� 351
A
Antonio Miguel, Elizabeth Gomes Souza,
and Carolina Tamayo Osorio
19 Mathematics Education and Ubuntu Philosophy:
The Analysis of Antiracist Mathematical Activity with Digital
Technologies�� 381
Maurício Rosa
Contents xxxi
20 Philosophy, Rigor, and Axiomatics in Mathematics:

Imposed or Intimately Related? �� 409
Min Bahadur Shrestha
21 I dealism and Materialism in Mathematics Teaching:
An Analysis from the Socio-epistemological Theory�� 429
Karla Sepúlveda Obreque and Javier Lezama Andalon
22 Cognitive and Neurological Evidence of Nonhuman Animal
Mathematics and Implications for Mathematics Education�� 443
Thomas E. Ricks
Part V Concluding
23 iving in the Ongoing Moment�� 461
L
Bronisław Czarnocha and Małgorzata Marciniak
Index�� 467
About the Contributors
Javier Lezama Andalón obtained PhD in Educational Mathematics from the

Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav del IPN, Mexico). Member
since 2011 of the National System of Researchers, Level 1; Regular member of the
Academy of Scientific Research of Mexico. From 2000 to 2021, research professor
of the Postgraduate in Educational Mathematics, postgraduate in the “online” dis-
tance modality at the Center for Research in Applied Science and Advanced
Technology (CICATA of the National Polytechnic Institute. Currently a visiting
professor of the Postgraduate in Teaching of Mathematics of the Faculty of
Mathematics of the Autonomous University of Guerrero, Mexico. https://orcid.
org/0000-0002-3574-6406
William Baker He is a professor at Hostos Community College of CUNY. He

received his PhD in Mathematics from The Graduate School and University Center,
CUNY in Algebraic Topology. He has authored and co-authored with members of a
teaching research team of faculty several chapters integrating creativity theory with
constructivist learning theory, as it applies to moments of insight within the class-
room learning environment. This work built upon early work by the research team
of Czarnocha, Prabhu, Dias and Baker titled “The Creative Enterprise of Mathematics
Teaching Research”, published in 2016 by Sense Publishers. In this earlier work,
Koestler’s notion of bisociation is synthesized with the most elementary type of
reflective abstraction, referred to as interiorization. The resulting integrated frame-
work for analyzing “Aha” Moments within learning, we refer to as an “emerging
bisociative frame”. In this current work, this integrated frame is extended to include
moments of insight within social learning environments best described by
Vygotsky’s internalization. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4655-2989
Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo is a professor of Philosophy of Education.

Received her bachelor’s at Pedagogia Licenciatura from the University of São Paulo
(1963), bachelor’s at Pedagogy from the University of São Paulo (1963), master’s at
Educational Advisement from the University of São Paulo (1964) and doctorate at
Education Science from Philosophy, Science and Letters Faculty of Rio Claro
xxxiii
xxxiv About the Contributors
(1973). She has experience in Education, focusing on Philosophy of Education, act-

ing on the following subjects: education, mathematics education, phenomenology,
qualitative research, philosophy of mathematics education. Her research includes
over 200 publications and over 10,500 citations. https://orcid.
org/0000-0002-3533-169X
Peter Collignon studied Mathematics with minors in physics and economics at the
University of Bonn, Germany. In the diploma degree, his focus was on stochastic
topics such as Markov decision processes. After non-university activities at the
Federal Institute of Hydrology and the Rhine State Library in Koblenz, he took
lectureships in business mathematics and operations research at the University of
Cooperative Education Thuringia as well as private educational institutions and col-
laborated on projects in social science informatics at the University Koblenz-
Landau, Germany. There he worked for two years in teacher training, which he
continued in 2003 at the University of Erfurt, Germany, as a research and teaching
associate. From 2017 to 2019, he was a substitute professor for Mathematics
Education at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Current research interests are
related to scientific theoretical aspects of mathematical modeling of social science
and economic topics. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2675-6885
Bronisław Czarnocha is a professor of Mathematics at Hostos Community

College of CUNY. Received his PhD in Mathematical Physics and Mathematical
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics at Yeshiva University, New York City, with his
dissertation: “States in Separable Algebras”. His interest in investigations of learn-
ing developed through practice of teaching led him to formulate the Teaching-
Research NYCity methodology; he is the editor of Mathematics Teaching-Research
Journal online. At present, his research interests center on the creativity of
Aha!Moment and its role in learning through the development of concepts. He has
published around 50 papers in Mathematics Education and 4 books in the area, the
most recent Creativity of Aha! Moment and Mathematics Education (edited together
with William Baker) by Brill |Sense Publishers. https://orcid.
org/0000-0002-2182-5277
Yeanealem Ayalew Degu is an assistant professor of Mathematics Education at

Kotebe University of Education (KUE), Ethiopia. Yenealem is interested in and has
been working on philosophy, creative imagination, ethnomathematics, teacher edu-
cation, career development, qualitative research, geometry, topology and discourse.
His publications address a variety of topics. For instance, his books Transformation
Geometry and Preparatory Mathematics could be mentioned as exemplary works.
Before joining KUE, Yenealem had been a secondary school mathematics teacher
and Education Office Vice Head at Dejen Woreda (2004-2007). He also served as
member of Ethical Board, organizer of conferences, organizer of “Mathematics
Forum” and “Olympiad”, presenter of Seminars, Trainer and Academic Program
Officer at Dire Dawa University (2009–2022). Yenealem is promoting profiles of
Ethiopian Science and Mathematics Educators on social Media. In summary, he
About the Contributors xxxv
expresses himself as teacher, writer, trainer, coordinator, organizer, host, volunteer

and leader. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4553-3874
Paul Ernest, after studying Mathematics and Philosophy at Sussex and London
Universities, taught mathematics in a London comprehensive school in the 1970s.
He lectured in Mathematics Education at Homerton College, Cambridge, De
Montfort University, Bedford, and the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Dr.
Ernest was appointed to the University of Exeter in 1984 where he was promoted as
the first ever professor of the Philosophy of Mathematics Education in 1998.
Currently his position is that of emeritus professor. At Exeter, he established and ran
the innovative blended learning doctoral and master’s programs in mathematics
education. He has served as visiting professor in Trondheim and Oslo, Norway and
Liverpool Hope and Brunel University and examined doctorates in scores of coun-
tries worldwide. His research explores questions at the intersections of philosophy,
mathematics and education, including ethics and the social and critical dimensions
of mathematics and mathematics education. His research was cited in more than
fifteen thousand scholarly publications. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7985-2852
Gerald A. Goldin is a distinguished professor of Mathematics Education,

Mathematics and Physics at Rutgers University. His research includes over 200
publications, embracing these three fields. He directed several major STEM educa-
tion projects, including New Jersey’s Statewide Systemic Initiative and “MetroMath:
The Center for Mathematics in America’s Cities”. He is a recipient of the Humboldt
Research Prize for work in quantum physics. His current educational research
focuses on affect and engagement in mathematical learning and problem solving.
He also co-authored (with Jennifer T. Doherty) two illustrated storybooks for young
children, The Mouse of Gold (2006) and The Fierce and Gentle Wolf (2011), pub-
lished in Scotland by Serafina Press. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5422-9690
Thomas Hausberger is holding an associate professorship in Mathematics

Education at the University of Montpellier, France. After an early career where he
contributed to the Langlands program in pure mathematics, he turned to research in
university mathematics education, of which he is an internationally recognized
expert. He is one of the coordinators of the International Network for Didactic
Research in University Mathematics (INDRUM). His research interests include
teaching and learning of mathematical structuralism in advanced mathematics;
Klein's second discontinuity (the transfer of advanced mathematical knowledge to
knowledge useful for the high school teacher); relationships between didactics and
epistemology of mathematics; mathematics-science interdisciplinarity. Also, he is
involved in the activities of the international study group on the relations between
History and Pedagogy of Mathematics (HPM), in the community of Philosophy of
Mathematics Education, and he is developing joint research programs in Philosophy
and Didactics of Mathematics in France. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6013-1975
xxxvi About the Contributors
Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy is an associate professor at the Department of

Mathematics, New York College of Technology, City University of New York
(CUNY). Between completing her master’s and doctoral degrees, she spent 15 years
as a full-time high school mathematics teacher, curriculum developer and student
teacher mentor. She serves regularly as a consultant for the International
Baccalaureate (IB) program on curriculum, assessment and examiner training. Her
research interests center on philosophy of mathematics education, dialogic teach-
ing, teacher professional identity and teacher professional learning, with a particular
emphasis on critical approaches to mathematics education and on the promotion of
philosophical dialogue in the mathematics classroom. https://orcid.
org/0000-0003-3810-0237
Hui-Chuan Li is a lecturer in Mathematics Education at the Moray House School

of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK. Received her PhD from the
University of Cambridge, UK, in 2015 on “A Problem-Based Learning Approach to
Developing Fifth Grade Students’ Fraction Sense in Taiwan: Challenges and
Effects”. Her current research interests lie in the field of mathematics learning and
teaching in both primary and secondary education, with a focus on classroom inter-
action and teacher professional development. She also has a long-standing interest
in investigating the impact of mathematics curriculum on students’ opportunity to
learn mathematics, from an international comparative perspective. Published 17
papers. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8116-5269
Małgorzata Marciniak is an associate professor at the LaGuardia Community

College of CUNY and the Managing Editor of the Mathematics Teaching Research
Journal. She received her PhD in Mathematics from Missouri University of Science
and Technology with dissertation “Holomorphic Extensions on Toric Varieties”.
Her current work splits among pure mathematics, applied mathematics and educa-
tion. She has been studying ends of topological spaces and mathematical simula-
tions of efficiency of flexible solar panels. She is interested in applications of
theories of creativity in the classroom and has already published numerous articles
about this subject. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3090-6113 [orcid.org]
John Mason spent 40 years at the Open University. Currently, he continues in

retirement to work on mathematical problems, to develop applets to help himself
and others appreciate and comprehend mathematical concepts. Having written the
equivalent of 10 or more books for the Open University on Mathematics Education,
John is perhaps best known as lead author of Thinking Mathematically, in print
since 1982 and described at the time of the first edition as a “classic” text. He spent
some 20 years articulating a way of working on oneself with colleagues (The
Discipline of Noticing), trying to capture the essence of Professional Development
and the ways of working used in the Centre for Mathematics Education at the Open
University, and based on what he learned from J. G Bennett who was a mathemati-
cian, mystic and Teacher. He assembled Fundamental Constructs in Mathematics
About the Contributors xxxvii
Education as support for teachers of mathematics who wanted to turn their concerns
into research at master’s level and beyond. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6079-4322
Mitsuru Matsushima is a professor of Mathematics Education at Kagawa

University in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. He holds doctorate in Education. For the
past 20 years, he has been a teacher at elementary and junior high schools and spe-
cial needs education schools. He is currently studying the realization of equity in
mathematics education and the philosophy of mathematics education, but he already
has investigated some themes: Research on class culture that fosters co-agency
through dialogue in mathematics learning; Constructing interaction models for dia-
logue and extracting principles of lesson design to deepen mathematics learning;
Theory and practice of mathematics lesson design to deepen mathematics learning
for all children; A study on the development of deductive reasoning skills in the
upper grades of elementary school to reduce the gap in mathematics; and Study on
lesson design of jigsaw learning method in mathematics education. https://orcid.
org/0000-0002-8520-0321
Antonio Miguel is a retired professor at the Department of Teaching and Cultural

Practices, Faculty of Education, the State University of Campinas, São Paulo,
Brazil. At this university, he is a full researcher and carries out investigations in:
therapeutic-decolonial studies in interdisciplinary school (mathematics) education;
therapeutic-decolonial historiographies of mathematics and mathematics education;
philosophy of mathematics and mathematics education. The main authors of refer-
ence that constitute the field of dialogue for the development of these investigations
are Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida. The methodical attitude that has been
guiding these investigations is the therapeutic-deconstructionist one. He was a
founding member of the Study, Memory and Research Circle in Mathematics
Education (CEMPEM/FE-UNICAMP), the Zetetiké Journal, the HIFEM Research
Group (History, Philosophy and Mathematics Education) and the PHALA
Interinstitutional Research Group (Education, Language and Cultural Practices).
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7156-8291
Regina D. Möller studied Mathematics at the Johannes Gutenberg University in

Mainz, Germany, with a minor in physics and graduated with a diploma. She then
graduated from the Studienseminar in Mainz, Germany, taking the first and second
state examinations in Mathematics and Physics. This was followed by a doctorate in
Mathematics Education at the University of Würzburg, Germany; and she also com-
pleted her habilitation at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Regina Möller taught
at the College of the University of Maryland (European division) and was a research
assistant at the University of Düsseldorf. Furthermore, she worked as an academic
councilor at the Chair for Didactics of Mathematics at the University of Würzburg,
Research Assistant at the Department of Mathematics / Computer Science, German
Institute for Distance Learning, University of Tübingen and as an academic senior
counselor at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Koblenz-Landau. Then
she taught as C3-Professor at the University of Erfurt, Germany. She was an editor
xxxviii About the Contributors
of several class books and journals on mathematics education. Currently she teaches
Mathematics Education at Humboldt University, Berlin. https://orcid.
org/0009-0001-5096-8306
Karla Sepúlveda Obreque is a Primary School Teacher and Secondary School

Mathematics Teacher. She works at the Center for School Research and Development
at the Catholic University of Temuco, Chile. She holds a PhD degree in Mathematics
Education from Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City. Her dissertation was
about Teacher’s epistemology on mathematical knowledge under the socioepiste-
mological study. Her work lines are: socioepistemology, didactics of mathematics,
curriculum in its implicit and explicit dimensions, as well as research in educational
mathematics and the figure of the teacher. She has given 17 presentations discussing
teacher's preparation. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2397-1999
Michael Otte is a professor emeritus at the Department of Mathematics, University

of Bielefeld/Germany. In 1967, he obtained a doctoral degree in mathematics with
the minor subject of German literature and literary criticism from the University of
Göttingen. The title of his mathematical doctoral dissertation was “Beiträge zur
Theorie der komplexen Liegruppen”. From 1973 to 2003, he has been a co-director
of a Central Research Institute on questions of mathematical education and related
subject areas (Mathematics, History and Philosophy of Mathematics, Psychology).
In 2005, Springer Science + Business Media published a volume Activity and Sign
(M. Hofmann, J. Lenhard and F., Seeger, eds.) on the occasion of his retirement,
which contain sample information about his scientific activities. https://orcid.
org/0000-0001-9248-1312
Frédéric Patras is CNRS senior research scientist (Directeur de Recherche) at

Université Côte d’Azur; he has to his name around 100 research articles in algebra,
probability and its applications, mathematical physics and philosophy of mathemat-
ics. He wrote two books on the philosophy of mathematics (The Essence of Numbers,
Springer 2020 and Contemporary Mathematical Thinking, Springer 2023) and one
in algebra together with Pierre Cartier (Classical Hopf Algebras and their
Applications, Springer 2021). He holds a PhD in Mathematics from Université Paris
Diderot. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Mathematics and Philosophy, Editor
of the Annales de l’Institut Henri Poincaré D. Combinatorics, Physics and Their
Interactions, Journal of Interdisciplinary Methodologies and Issues in Science and
of EpiDEMES. He is a co-organizer of the research network PhilMathMED. The
webpage http://math.unice.fr/patras/ shows a complete list of his publications.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8098-8279
Mircea Radu has an MA in Mathematics from the University of Bucharest (1985).

PhD in mathematics education from the University of Bielefeld (2000) with a thesis
concerning a series of major contributions to axiomatics in mathematics, philoso-
phy and mathematics education during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
His research focusses ever since on related topics, exploring the mutual links
About the Contributors xxxix
between mathematics education, the history of mathematics and of mathematics

education, philosophy of mathematics and axiomatics. Mircea Radu’s work experi-
ence includes both mathematics teaching as well as research on curriculum develop-
ment and on topics like the one mentioned above. He presently teaches mathematics
at the Oberstufen-Kolleg des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen in Bielefeld, Germany.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0337-4281
Thomas E. Ricks is an associate professor with Tenure and holds a Graduate

Faculty Status at the School of Education, College of Human Sciences and
Education, Louisiana State University. His PhD is in Mathematics Education from
the University of Georgia, 2007, and his master's degree is also in Mathematics
Education from Brigham Young University, 2003. He has published over 35 papers,
and given many international presentations. Dr. Ricks’ research interests include
mathematics and science education teaching and learning, teacher preparation,
complexity and international cross-cultural comparisons, particularly between the
USA and mainland China. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5409-0089
Maurício Rosa is a professor at the Faculty of Education, Department of Teaching

and Curriculum and at the Post-Graduate Program in Teaching of Mathematics at
the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He holds a post-doctorate from
Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, and from the Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro (UFRJ, Brazil). He received his PhD in Mathematics Education at São Paulo
State University – Unesp – Rio Claro (SP) (2008), Master in Mathematics Education
(2004) from Unesp too and Graduated in Mathematics Education from Lutheran
University of Brazil (ULBRA) (2002). He participated in Doctoral Program with
Internship Abroad at London South Bank University, London (UK). He has experi-
ence in Mathematics, with an emphasis on Mathematics Education, working mainly
on the following fronts: Digital Technologies, Distance Education, Electronic
Games, Role Playing Game (RPG), Philosophy of Mathematics Education, Teacher
Education, Decolonial Mathematics Education and Exclusion/inclusion in
Mathematics Education (racism, homophobia, transphobia etc.). His research
includes over 120 publications. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9682-4343
Uwe Schürmann works on his dissertation project on “Philosophical and episte-

mological perspectives on modeling”. Since 2021, he has been appointed as a lec-
turer at the Faculty of Educational Mathematics and Its Disciplines in Northwestern
Switzerland. So, he is a lecturer at the Institute of Primary Education, chair of
Mathematics Didactics and Its Disciplines, PH Northwestern Switzerland. Also, he
was pedagogical assistant at the State Institute for Schools in North Rhine-
Westphalia in the Department of Educational Research, Evaluation, School Quality,
School Development and Scientific Cooperation; half-time secondment to univer-
sity service at the University of Münster with a focus on comparative work in grade
8 (Vera-8 mathematics); and research assistant at the Institute for Didactics of
Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Münster. https://orcid.
org/0009-0003-2288-9824
xl About the Contributors
Min Bahadur Shrestha is interested in the significance of mathematics in the

light of its nature and structure; he worked on geometry education focusing on sec-
ondary school proof geometry. In the later years, he has been interested in the phi-
losophy of mathematics education. He received his PhD in Mathematics Education
from Panjab University, Chandigarh, India, 2005; MEd (Mathematics Education,
1987) and BEd (Math and Science, 1978), Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu,
Nepal. He has been a professor/associate professor/lecturer/assistant lecturer (from
1979 to 2018) working as a part-time teacher and thesis supervisor in Graduate
School of Education, FOE, at the Faculty of Education (FOE), Tribhuvan University,
Nepal. He wrote about two dozens of articles/papers in the field of mathematics
education and philosophy of mathematics published in national and international
journals. Books – Ganit Darshan (The Philosophy of Mathematics, 2013) published
by Nepal Academy, Kathmandu, Nepal. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2789-2876
Ole Skovsmose has a special interest in critical mathematics education. He has

investigated the notions of landscape of investigation, mathematics in action, stu-
dents’ foreground and pedagogical imagination. He is professor emeritus at the
Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University, Denmark, but is now liv-
ing most of his time in Brazil. He has published several books. Received his PhD in
1982 from the Royal Danish School of Educational Studies (mathematics educa-
tion). Dr. scient. 1995 from Aalborg University. From 1982 associate professor at
Aalborg University. From 1996 professor in Mathematics Education at The Royal
Danish School of Educational Studies. He has been member of the committee
directing the projects “Mathematics Education and Democracy” (1988-1993).
Together with Celia Hoyles and Jeremy Kilpatrick, director for BACOMET-4 proj-
ect. Co-director of the research program: Curriculum, Learning and “Buildung” for
the 21st Century, Royal Danish School of Educational Studies. Co-director of The
Centre for Research of Learning Mathematics, a co-operative project between
Roskilde University Centre, Aalborg University and The Danish University of
Education. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1528-796X
Elizabeth Gomes Souza holds a PhD in Teaching, Philosophy and History of

Sciences by Federal University of Bahia-Brazil. Professor at the Faculty of
Mathematics and Scientific Education and the Postgraduate Program in Science and
Mathematics Education of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), Brazil. Vice-
leader of the Group of Studies and Research in Mathematical Modeling – UFPA,
Brazil. Coordinates the Mathematical Modeling Working Group of the Brazilian
Society of Mathematics Education (2022–2024). Coordinates the Universal Project
“The decolonial option in Mathematics Education” financed by the National Council
for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq – Brazil). https://orcid.
org/0000-0001-7119-0348
Carolina Tamayo-Osorio holds degree in Mathematics and Magister in Education

from the Universidad de Antioquia (UdeA, Colombia) and PhD in Education from
the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Brazil). Professor at the Faculty of
About the Contributors xli
Education, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Brazil). Member of the

inSURgir Research and Study Group (UFMG), of the Education, Language and
Practices Research Group (UNICAMP) and of the Mathematics, Education and
Society Group (UdeA). Professor at master’s and doctoral level at the Postgraduate
Program in Knowledge and Social Inclusion at UFMG. Research lines: Philosophy
of mathematics education, education in the indigenous context, decoloniality since
the global south and ethnomathematics. The main author of reference that constitute
the field of dialogue for the development of investigations are Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Coordinator for South America of the
International Ethnomathematics Network. Member of the Editorial Committee of
the Latin American Journal of Ethnomathematics. https://orcid.
org/0000-0002-8478-7845
Steve Watson is an associate professor at the Faculty of Education, University of

Cambridge. He is co-chair of the Knowledge Power Politics research cluster in the
Faculty and is also the Editor in Chief of the Cambridge Journal of Education. His
research draws on social systems theory, phenomenology and historical sociology
in the context of media, policy and politics, knowledge and education; the sociology
of STEM and mathematics education; and teachers’ professional learning. He holds
degrees in Engineering and Educational Studies from the University of Cambridge,
the Open University and the University of Nottingham. He also holds qualified
teacher status with a Postgraduate Certificate of Education from the University of
Sheffield. He has worked in retail, telecommunications and in state schools as a
mathematics teacher prior to becoming an academic. https://orcid.
org/0000-0003-4818-1472
Part I
A Broad View of the Philosophy
Chapter 1
The Ontological Problems of Mathematics
and Mathematics Education
Paul Ernest
1.1 Introduction
Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality,
the first principles of being, identity and changes to being, that is, becoming. In this
chapter, I want to explore being, existence and identity as they concern mathematics
and mathematics education. In particular, I want to address the ontological problems
of mathematics and mathematics education. The ontological problem of mathematics
is that of accounting for the nature of mathematical objects and their relationships.1
What are mathematical objects? Of what ‘stuff’ are they made and do they consist?
The ontological problem of mathematics education concerns persons. What is
the nature and being of persons, including both children and adults? In the context
of this chapter, I will restrict my attention to human mathematical identities, that
part of being which pertains to mathematics, namely the mathematical identity of
mathematicians and the developing mathematical identities of students. What are
these mathematical identities and how are they constituted? Human beings are
located in, and constituted through the cultures they inhabit, so my answer will
encompass how these contribute to mathematical identities, as well.
The twin ontological problems of mathematics and mathematics education con-
cern the chief entities in the two domains. These are mathematical objects first, and
second, persons, restricted to their mathematical identities. The structural similarity
1
I use the term nature without presuming essentialism or assuming ‘natural’ states of being. I shall
answer the question of how the properties and characteristics of mathematical objects and human
beings as mathematical subjects are inscribed within them as a process of becoming without the
presuppositions of essentialism.
P. Ernest (*)
School of Education, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK, EX1 2LU
e-mail: P.Ernest@exeter.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 3

M. A. V. Bicudo et al. (eds.), Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy of Mathematics
Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35209-6_1
4 P. Ernest
does not end with these parallel twin focuses of inquiry. In each of these two
domains, there are dominant myths that must be critiqued or cut down before their
respective problems can be addressed adequately. In mathematics, there is the myth
of Platonism, namely that mathematical objects exist in some eternal, superhuman
realm. According to this view, mathematical objects were there before we came
along, and they will still exist after we are all gone.
In mathematics education, there is the rather more hidden problem of individual-
ism. This is the view that persons are all existentially separated creatures whose
actions, learning and even whose being take place in hermetically sealed and sepa-
rated personal domains.
However, there is also dissimilarity in the treatments I can hope to offer. While I
can aspire to giving an account of the nature of mathematical objects, I cannot hope
to treat the nature and being of persons except in a very partial way. As I have
indicated, I restrict my inquiry to those aspects of human being that pertain to
learning and doing mathematics, and their personal foundations.
1.2 Mathematical Objects
In this part, in a number of linked sections, I offer an attempt to giving an account

of the nature of mathematical objects. I start by trying to clear some of the obstructive
conceptual undergrowth that stands in the way of my account. In the exposition that
follows on, all the elements that make up the social constructionist account of the
ontology of mathematical objects are introduced and then summarized in Sect. 1.2.8.
1.2.1 Critique of Platonism
According to Platonism, mathematics comprises an objective, timeless and super-

human realm populated by the objects of mathematics. These objects are pure
abstractions, and they exist in an unchanging ideal realm quite distinct from the
empirical world of our day-to-day living. Plato’s doctrine of Platonism locates other
abstract ideals beyond mathematics such as Justice, Beauty and Truth, in this realm.
Not surprisingly, the nature, status and location of abstract ideas has been a matter
of debate at least since the time of Plato. The medievalists divided into the camps of
nominalists (abstract objects are primarily linguistic names), conceptualists (abstract
objects are ideas in our minds), and realists (abstract objects are real entities that are
located in some platonic-like realm). All of these positions have their problems.
Many of the greatest philosophers and mathematicians have subscribed to the
doctrine of Platonism in the subsequent two plus millennia since Plato’s time. In the
modern era, the view has been endorsed by many leading thinkers including Frege
(1884, 1892), Gödel (1964), and Penrose (2004).
1 The Ontological Problems of Mathematics and Mathematics Education 5
Although I shall reject it, quite a lot is gained by this view. First of all, mathema-
ticians and philosophers have a strong belief in the absolute certainty of mathemati-
cal truth and in the objective existence of mathematical objects, and a belief in
Platonism is consonant with this and even validates this view. Platonism posits a
quasi-mystical realm into which only the select few – initiates into the arcane prac-
tices of mathematics – are permitted to gaze, and within there – to discern mathe-
matical objects and mathematical truth.
Second, this view is a concomitant of, and validates purism, the ideology that
mathematics is value-free and ethics-free. Human values are excluded by definition,
for they cannot seep into or taint the hermetically sealed superhuman platonic realm,
since it exists in another dimension. As I have recounted elsewhere, purism is an
ideology that was strong in Plato’s time and then again in the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century mathematics (Ernest, 2021a).
Third, Platonism supplies mathematics with a theory of meaning. According to
this theory, mathematical signs and terms refer to objects in this ideal realm.
Likewise, mathematical sentences, claims, and theorems refer to true, or otherwise,
according to their status, states of affairs and relationships between the constituent
objects that hold in the Platonic realm.
However, a distinction should be made between Platonism and mathematical
realism. According to the latter, mathematical objects are real; they are something
verifiably shared amongst many people. However, they do not necessarily exist in a
superhuman and supraphysical realm. For example, as I shall argue, they can be
social objects. However, developing a social theory of mathematical objects is more
complex than simply positing a Platonic realm, which can be conjured, ready-made
out of a hat. Explaining and validating a social constructionist theory of mathematical
objects requires the development of conceptual machinery and to a certain degree,
a suspension of disbelief, because Platonism has penetrated so deeply into our
understanding of mathematics and universals.
Platonism is not without its problems. Two major problems concern access and
causality. How can mathematicians access the Platonic realm? With what faculties
can they peer into it to discern its objects and truths? No such sixth sense is known
unless one strays into the realms of the mystic and shaman. And even if one did
stray there, and could discern mathematical objects and truths directly, what
justifications could be given to others for the existence of the objects and the validity
of the truths discerned? To say I saw it with my mind’s eye is not enough.
Mathematical objects need to be accurately defined to be communicated, and
mathematical truths need to be convincingly proven in public texts to be acceptable.
So, their means of validation are just those that one would need even if there were
no superhuman Platonic realm into which one could peer (Benacerraf, 1973).
In terms of causality, there are problems both ways (Linnebo, 2018). How are
newly defined concepts and newly proven results inserted into the Platonic realm?
What is there about our inventions and discoveries that cause them to appear there?
Plato argued these ‘new’ objects were there all along and we can only discern them
when we have recreated them for ourselves. This is surely an unsatisfactory ad hoc
answer. If we can only discern what we have recreated, why not dispense with the
6 P. Ernest
mystification and acknowledge we created them, in the first place? In the reverse
direction, how can the truths of the Platonic realm causally determine outcomes in
the material world? Why is pure mathematics so unreasonably effective in the real
world? How and why are mathematical truths so real and so persuasive to children,
students, and adults prior to demonstrations? I suppose that if mathematical truths
hold in all possible worlds, then those found in the Platonic realm must hold in the
material world. But this is not a causal argument implying that mathematical truths
from the Platonic realm force their applications to hold in the physical world. Once
again it leaves the Platonic realm superfluous.
Although positing the Platonic realm as the home of mathematical objects and as
a source for mathematical truths opens a number of serious problems, it remains a
widespread, legitimate, and irrefutable view. Like many ideologies that posit other
realms full of celestial beings it remains a matter of choice and belief. I choose to
use Occam’s razor, the principle of ontological parsimony, that entities should not
be multiplied beyond necessity. Extending this to the multiplication of ontological
realms, I regard the expansion of mathematical ontology through the addition of the
superhuman Platonic realm to be unnecessary. It creates new problems of access
and causality. It represents a succumbing to the historical vice of Idealism. My
claim is that socially based mathematical realism can accommodate many of the
benefits of Platonism without all these extra costs. So, I reject Platonism while
embracing mathematical realism.
1.2.2 Meaning Theory
Above I acknowledge that Platonism supplies mathematics with a theory of mean-

ing. According to this theory, mathematical signs and terms refer to objects and their
manifested relationships in the ideal Platonic realm. Most simply, this is a referen-
tial or picture theory of meaning. Ernest (2018a) shows some of the inadequacies of
this theory, which is also widely criticized elsewhere (e.g. Rorty, 1979). But if one
is to reject this theory what is to stand in its place? If mathematical signs and words
are not simply the names of objects in a Platonic realm how else can they signify?
How can we offer a way to understand their meanings? In my view, Wittgenstein’s
(1953) theory of meaning, according to which much of the meaning of words and
other signs is given by their use, offers the best solution.
With regard to meaning, Wittgenstein says that much of meaning is given by use:
“for a large class of cases – though not for all – in which we employ the word
‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language”
(Wittgenstein, 1953, I, sec. 43). He allows for three other sources of meaning –
custom, rule-following, and physiognomic meaning (Finch, 1995; Cunliffe, 2006).
Focusing on meaning as use, it is important to hedge this in the way that Wittgenstein
does. Namely that the use of words or signs is always located within language
games situated within forms of life. Thus, according to this theory, the meanings of
words and signs are the roles they play within conversations located in social forms
of life. But these are not free-floating conversations, they are conversations centered
on, and intrinsically a part of, shared activities with a goal or object in mind. In one
extreme case this might be conversing after dinner with friends with combined aims
of sharing information (or gossip), consolidating relationships or just for the
intrinsic joy of relaxing with friends and family. Such discussion, although perhaps
capturing the popular meaning of the term ‘conversation’, is trivial and fails to
reflect the central importance of conversation.
Conversations are not just trivial decorations but an integral part of social activi-
ties. The function of conversations is to facilitate important joint and productive
activities through directions, confirmations, and other means. The meanings of the
terms and signs employed are their functions within these activities. Joint action
within a form of life is usually directed and punctuated by discourse. In other words,
language in conversation is a tool employed to further a joint activity and take it
towards its goal. Indeed, the language used in productive material activities is as
often imperative or interrogative as it is declarative. Such as in the kitchen: ‘stir
this’, ‘is there enough salt in the sauce?’, and ‘this is tonight’s meal’. Where
conversation is lacking in a joint activity, often custom and rules have been laid
down conversationally in earlier manifestations of the form of life rendering
repeated conversations and directions superfluous, so the joint activity can progress
without verbal instructions or elaboration.
Wittgenstein makes it clear that meanings depend on the language games in
which they are used, and ‘When language-games change, then there is a change in
concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change’ (Wittgenstein,
1969, sect. 65).
Two other dimensions of Wittgenstein’s ideas of meaning, custom and rule-
following, are also important. Cunliffe (2006: p. 65) points out that there are deontic
dimensions of meaning entangled with the other uses, with widespread imperatives
imposing or requiring rule-following, the meeting of obligations, lawfulness, and
respect for customary usage. Language use is far from limited to the alethic mode –
meaning that it encompasses epistemic, factual, and truth-orientated functions. It
also commonly employs the imperative mode. This is very important when under-
standing the meaning of mathematical texts, where the imperative mode far out-
weighs the declarative or indicative modes, as an analysis of verb usage in the
corpus of mathematical texts reveals (Ernest, 1998, 2018a; Rotman, 1993). I shall
argue that the institutions of mathematics are held up by tacit or explicit rule-
following and custom, so this dimension of meaning is very significant. Indeed, I
hope to show that the very objects of mathematics are created and maintained by
tacit agreements, rule-following, and embedded customs inscribed within the
objects themselves. For example, to count you must follow a string of rules, but as
counting skills develop, and numbers come into being as self-subsistent mathematical
entities, then the rules and norms appear to dissolve or disappear into the perceived
nature of the numbers themselves. But I get ahead of myself.
8 P. Ernest
1.2.3 What Are the Objects of Mathematics?
Platonism and realism offer answers as to where mathematical objects are to be

found (Skovsmose & Ravn, 2019). But apart from the fact that they are universals
and abstractions, these ontologies do not tell us what the objects of mathematics are;
they do not answer the question of what is the stuff of which they are made?
Unfortunately, traditional ontology is not a lot of help here. It seems to be satis-
fied with a category of being, rather than a deeper inquiry into the very stuff or
substance of the existents. What is needed is a multi-disciplinary approach that
combines insights from philosophy of mathematics, mathematics itself, semiotics,
cognitive science, psychology, sociology, linguistics, and mathematics education
into the nature of mathematical objects. No one of these disciplines is sufficient of
itself, as I intend to show, to satisfactorily answer the question: Of what stuff are
mathematical objects made?
There is another obstacle in the way of a naturalistic account of the ontology of
mathematical objects, namely, the ideologies of essentialism and presentism (Irvine,
2020). In this context, essentialism presupposes that mathematical objects are made
of some fixed stuff, analogous to diamonds or other precious stones, but existing in
an eternal realm, where they are found to be permanent and unchanging.
The ideology of presentism searches for answers to all questions in a timeless
present, where there is no change, development, or becoming. In my view, ignoring
Plato’s admission of ‘becoming’ into ontology, presentism underpins much of
modern Anglo philosophy. There logical arguments are timelessly valid, and
concepts presumed fixed and permanent. Where such properties are attributed to
mathematical concepts and objects, they are presumed completed and there is no
need to discuss how they came to be and how this shapes what they are. Becoming
is ignored and disallowed. I think that to fully understand mathematical concepts
and objects you need to know how they became as they are. Especially, as being
abstractions, they have been abstracted from lower orders of abstractions or actions.
Mathematical objects do not have a fixed essence, for they change over time, and
they have different meanings in different contexts.
Let me illustrate this with arguably the simplest of all mathematical concepts, the
number one. This first appears in human history and in child development as the first
word in a spoken count (‘one’, ‘uno’, ‘yek’, ‘tik’) or as the first tally in symbolically
recorded counting. The number, or rather numeral, ‘one’ is the first ordinal in a
counting sequence (meaning ‘first’). The early use of this numeral is enactive, with
the action of pointing or making a mark accompanying its utterance. When the last
ordinal number in counting out a set becomes defined as its cardinal number, the
word ‘one’ or sign ‘1’ gains its cardinal meaning as the number one. Counting out
a triplet with the ordinals 1, 2, 3 ends with 3 which by definition is its cardinality.
Counting a singleton – ordinal one – results in cardinal one. This marks the arrival
of the concept of one in its first rudimentary but complete form, the cardinal number
one. At this stage in its development, number one is understood to be on a par with
the other natural numbers 2, 3, 4, and so forth.
It is important to notice that the concept of one is doubly abstracted. First from
the physical action of counting, from tallying, or from just saying the number names
out loud prior to counting. Second, once ordinal counting is mastered for small
values, the cardinal number one is abstracted from the ordinal one, as comes to
represent the value of a completed count.
In tallying, strokes or marks are used to represent the outcomes of counts (e.g.
‘///’ representing the count of three. Each stroke is itself a part of a unit action and
ultimately each of these units ‘one more’ is identified with ‘one’. The tally ‘///’
represents one (more) and one more and one more which is a compound way of
representing three (via the ordinal ‘third’).
In number systems, the numeral ‘1’ resembles a tally stroke. In several number
systems, such as those of the Ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and Romans, numerals
made up of one, two, and three strokes (I, II, III, respectively) are used for the first
few numbers representing both repeated ones and unit strokes in a tally. Studies of
proto-language suggest that the early, possibly prehistoric name for one was ‘tik’,
also meaning digit or finger (Lambek, 1996). Use of fingers for counting evidently
goes back a long way, and this word for one also stands for a single digit (as finger).
Indeed, the modern use of the word digit retains this ambiguity, standing both for
individual numerical signs (1 to 9) as well as for any single finger.
This is just the beginning of the development of the concept of one. The use of
the sign ‘1’ becomes more elaborate within systems of numeration, calculation, and
measurement. The numeral ‘1’ represents a unit in an abacus or place value system
in compound numbers (one ten, one hundred, etc. indicated in decimal place value
as 10, 100, respectively, with ‘1’ as an atomic component in a molecular sign).
Subsequently, with the introduction of multiplication, one serves as the multiplicative
identity element.
As number systems and structures are extended, ‘1’ has different meanings and
properties, across N, Z, Q, R, C. In Q, the numeral ‘1’ is used both in numerators
and denominators. In R (and Q), ‘1’ is used in extended place value notation as a
fraction of denomination ten to a negative power (e.g. 0.001 = 10−3). ‘1’ and other
numerals are used in algebra, length measures (and indeed all measures), in
fractions, extended place value notations, vectors, matrices, probability theory
(representing certainty), Boolean algebra (representing truth). The property of ‘one’
as the multiplicative identity in Q, R, and C is generalized throughout algebraic
structures such as groups, rings, fields (together with the more basic additive
identity 0).
In each of these different roles, ‘1’ has different uses and meanings, so its mean-
ing can never be said to be fixed, but is always dependent on the context of use, on
the background theory. Thus, the number one cannot be claimed to be a single fixed
mathematical object or concept. However, what we can say is that the number one,
like all Natural numbers, in its first emergence, is an abstraction of an action using
signs. An instance of a counting action can be physical, such as touching individual
members a set of objects (already conceptualized as countable units for the pur-
poses of counting, Ernest, 2021b), while uttering the sequence of ordinal names. Or
it can be conceptual where the units are counted without physical contact or
10 P. Ernest
movement. Either way the act of counting is an instance, a token of counting, cor-
responding to an abstracted type, the count. This count has an endpoint, a desig-
nated sign that represents the ordinal position of the last counted unit, which is
abstracted as the number, the cardinality of the set counted. Thus, the resultant
number, the cardinality is doubly abstracted from the instance of counting. First, as
the type or class of the designated count. Second, as the cardinal number abstracted
from the derived ordinal number.
This simplest of all the numbers, ‘little’ number one, serves to show both how
complex and multiply meaningful mathematical concepts are, as well as of what
they are formed. ‘One’ begins as an action associated with a sign, which is then
abstracted. The process is reified into an object. Virtually all named mathematical
objects consist of abstracted operations or actions on simpler mathematical objects
or actions.2 To enable a differentiation of levels into simpler/more complicated, one
can posit a hierarchy through which the relation of ‘simpler than’ can be defined.
The lowest level of mathematical actions (level 0) is made up of those that have a
physical correlate, like counting or drawing a line. The lowest levels of mathematical
objects (level 1) are abstractions of, or from, mathematical actions of level 0. A
mathematical action of level n + 1 operates on actions and objects that include at the
highest level those of level n. Likewise, a mathematical object of level n + 1 abstracts
actions and objects that include those up to and including level n.
What I have only exemplified in the case of ‘one’ is that there is a sign associated
with every (named) mathematical action or object. Frequently, there are several
signs. So, with one there is the spoken verbal name or word (in almost every
language), a written verbal name (‘one’), and a mathematical sign (‘1’). In various
arithmetics, there are in fact an infinite number of expressions with the numerical
value of 1 that could also be called names for 1 (e.g. 22–21, 0 + 1). The signs of
mathematics are of paramount importance. The signs not only help to create the
objects of mathematics, but they are also entangled with them. Mathematical actions
are typically actions on or with mathematical signs.
1.2.4 Mathematical Signs and Their Performativity
In order to fully engage with the role of signs in mathematics, with the semiotics of
mathematics, it is necessary to understand the performativity of mathematical signs.
As syntactical objects, mathematical signs are both the objects acted upon and the
crystallized residue of acts in themselves. In the first instance, all the ‘atoms’, the
ur-elements of mathematical signing are performed actions. Thus, as we have seen,
3 represents the product of tallying III which is itself the residual mark of the
repetitive physical act of counting one, two, three. In this way, counting employs
2
Various scholars in mathematics education research make this point (Sfard, 1994; Tall, 2013;
Dubinsky, 1991).
indexical signing because each stroke or physical tally movement corresponds to a

counted entity by proximity in space, time, or thought.
Within semantics, the performativity of mathematical signs is ontological. The
signs create their own meanings; the abstract objects of mathematics that they
denote. What we have is a ‘a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory
frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural
sort of being’ (Butler, 1999, p. 43–44). Although Butler is referring to another
domain, the process is identical for the construction of mathematical objects. Thus,
numerals and number words ‘do not refer to numbers, they serve as numbers’
(Wiese, 2003, p. 5, original emphasis). This is an important point that contradicts
any referential theory of meaning, including both the picture theory of meaning and
Platonism. Numerals, number word terms, and by extension all mathematical signs
need not indicate or refer beyond themselves to other objects as their meaning, let
alone to a supraphysical and ideal realm of existence. They themselves serve as their
own objects of meaning, coupled with the actions that they embody (and their
inferential antecedents and consequents).3 Mathematical language is thus
performative, for mathematical terms create, over time, the objects to which they
refer. As I have argued, counting via abstraction is the basis for the creation of
numbers, and likewise operations create mathematical functions. In the first instance,
these are inscribed numerals and enacted operations. Repeated usage reifies and
solidifies them into abstract mathematical objects.4 Furthermore, their currency of
use serves as a social warrant for them, verifying their legitimacy and existence.5
Elsewhere I argue that mathematical signs are performative in two ways, which
I term inner and outer. What I describe above is part of the inner performativity,
whereby mathematical sign usage creates mathematical objects. The outer
performativity of mathematics is the way it formats the way we experience and
interact with the material world (Skovsmose, 2019, 2020; Ernest, 2019). I will not
discuss this outer performativity further here (but see O’Halloran, 2005 and
Ernest, 2018b).
3
This has been used as an explicit strategy within mathematics. Henkin (1949) defines the refer-
ence of each sign within the system to be itself, in his classic proof of the completeness of the
first-order functional calculus.
4
This is supported both within philosophy (for example, Machover, 1983) and empirically by
research into the psychology of learning mathematics (Ernest, 2006; Tall, 2013).
5
In writing that signs create their own meanings, it is taken for granted and unwritten here that it is
signs-in-use by persons that perform actions, for it is persons that use signs and create and compre-
hend meanings.
12 P. Ernest
1.2.5 The Constitutional Role of Social Agreement

for Mathematical Objects
Social agreements play a decisive role in the constitution of mathematical objects

and the validation of mathematical knowledge. Such agreements may be tacit and
are introduced both implicitly and explicitly through mathematical practices and
everyday games and practices with young children. Before counting can even begin,
the idea of separate objects or units needs to be introduced into a learner or child’s
worldview. This is the idea that some of the features of the environment can be
construed as self-contained objects. Take for example, collections of toys, pebbles,
or sweets. Each item in the collection can be treated as a separate independent
object. In addition, steps in climbing a stairway, walking along the ground step by
step, or other sequences of actions can also be seen in this way as series of discrete
actions. Such a way of viewing a domain, although concrete and limited in extension
at first, prepares it to be viewed as countable (Ernest, 2021b).
Once the experienced world is thus construed into repeated units, the founda-
tions of counting can be laid. A further prerequisite to be learned and tacitly agreed
is a list of word numerals that must be used in a repeatable order. This list must be
both stable, that is invariant, and as at least as long as the number of items to be
counted. This is the first of Gelman and Gallistel’s (1978) five counting principles,
(1) The stable-order principle.
The other principles are as follows.
2. The one-one principle – this requires the assignment of one, and only one, dis-
tinct counting word to each of the items to be counted.
3. The cardinal principle – this states that, on condition that the one-one and stable-
order principles have been followed, the number name allocated to the final
object in a collection represents the number of items in that collection.
4. The abstraction principle – this allows that the preceding principles can be
applied to any collection of objects, whether tangible or not.
5. The order-irrelevance principle – this involves the knowledge that the order in
which items are counted is irrelevant.
These principles are something that a child must learn in their schooling or early
home life. But although often viewed as knowledge, they are deontic social
agreements. A quasi-counting activity must conform to them, or it is not socially
acceptable. Entering a game or any social practice requires conforming to the rules
and regulations of that activity as a participant. The rules are compulsory. They are
expressed in the deontic modality that indicates how behaviours must be, to accord
with the relevant norms.
The five counting principles listed here are part of the social agreements about
what constitutes counting and ultimately regulates what numbers are. All
mathematicians will adhere to such agreements, but they are so basic, so deeply
entrenched, that with familiarity they seem obvious, unnecessary, and not needing
to be articulated. Rules and agreements like these become subsumed into the
perceived essence of counting actions and number objects. Starting as necessary

features of counting they become seen as features of numbers, intrinsic properties
of the reified mathematical objects themselves. Only when someone like Cantor
introduces his theory of transfinite numbers is the one-one principle made explicit,
jolted back into focus, and considered in the light of the new problematic theoretical
context, the equipollence of infinite sets. Otherwise, the one-one principle in
counting is seen as intrinsic and definitional, rather than a norm that is (must be)
followed.
One of the most valuable and remarkable features of mathematics is how the
rich, deep, and complex concepts and objects come into being from simpler objects
and actions. This allows the dizzy heights of abstraction to be scaled and objects to
be created that exceed by so much what we perceive and experience in the material
world, such as the concept of infinite sets. However, one cost of such repeated
objectification and abstraction processes is that the rules and social agreements that
determine the nature and limits of lower-level objects, concepts, and actions become
perceived as essential characteristics of the more abstract objects created from them.
The social agreements that shape and constitute arithmetic, for example, become
hidden, forgotten, and indeed eventually denied as being the social agreements
underpinning number. It is not that their observance is breached, but that they are
seem as so essential that they become regarded as intrinsic to the constitution of the
objects. Many mathematicians and philosophers state that the natural numbers are
something given to humankind by nature (Penrose, 2004). The relationships,
extrinsic constraints, and norms that govern their proper and permissible usages
become seen as intrinsic properties of the objects in themselves. The social
agreements that give shape to objects of mathematics become seen as inscribed in
the essence and very being of the objects. The intellectual struggles of humankind
over millennia to create counting and numeration systems are no longer seen as
processes that through their notational inventions, their actions and conceptions,
created what are now seen as the independent objects, the natural numbers. Even
their name suggests that these numbers are natural, that is, given by nature, rather
than the outcomes of processes of social construction based on imposed rules
and norms.
My claim is that in this way social agreements play a constitutional role in math-
ematical objects. Cole (2009, p. 9) proposes ‘The thesis that mathematical enti-
ties—specifically mathematical domains—are pure constitutive social constructs
constituted by mathematical practices, i.e. the rationally constrained social activities
of mathematicians’. In other words, mathematical objects are social constructs, built
up from the socially enacted and socially warranted actions described above, and
founded on the social agreements of the community of mathematicians. These
agreements are expressions of the deontic nature of mathematical practices and are
manifested in conforming to their rules and norms. Many, if not most, of these
agreements are tacit, agreements in forms of life, as in mutually aligned mathematical
practices, not as explicit verbal agreements.
14 P. Ernest
1.2.6 Signs as Constitutive of Mathematical Objects
I have argued that the signs of mathematics play a constitutive role in the formation
of mathematical objects. Actions on signs and objects become the next level of
abstract objects, themselves depicted by signs. However, it should be made clear
that not all mathematical objects are named by signs. Sometimes abstractions create
whole classes of mathematical objects. For example, abstracting the set of Natural
numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, … into a completed whole named ‘N’ does not result in an
infinite number of names for all the members of N. We have a procedure for naming
arbitrarily large natural numbers, but we can never name more than the members of
a finite subset of N. Likewise mathematical abstraction creates many sets and classes
of mathematical objects which can never all be named. Only a finite number of
these mathematical objects can be named, even when the set to which they all
belong is named. Thus abstraction, generalization and, in particular, the idealized
completion of sets, sequences, and series cannot name all their members when they
are infinite.6
Quine (1969) argues that the ontological commitment of any theory, mathemati-
cal or scientific, is to the domains of objects over which its variables range. Thus,
Peano arithmetic, a scientific canonization of the rules of arithmetic, is ontologi-
cally committed to that which the variable n ranges over. This domain is N, the set
of all Natural numbers, and so Peano’s theory is committed to the existence of all of
the Natural numbers. Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory is committed to the existence of
all of the sets its variable x ranges over. This class of sets is very large and contains
sets of several orders of infinite magnitude. In both of these examples, our ontologi-
cal commitments, the classes of mathematical objects that the theories incorporate
or bring into being includes many, many objects that cannot ever be all named. In
both the cases of N and V,7 the universe of sets created by Zermelo–Fraenkel (ZFC)
set theory, the global mathematical object constructed is a mathematical domain, a
space containing many mathematical objects. These are themselves mathematical
objects that encapsulate the endless processes of generating their members, each
becoming a single entity within the space of mathematics.
1.2.7 The Human Construction of Mathematical Objects
I have argued that mathematical objects are formed through actions on mathemati-
cal objects and signs which are then abstracted and reified into higher level mathe-
matical concepts and objects. Notice that the verbs involved are all active: ‘to
abstract’, ‘to reify’, ‘to act’, which all represent the action of a subject on an object.
6
This answers the criticism of Cole (2008) that names cannot be constituent of mathematical
objects because there are too many objects to be named.
7
V is the von Neumann class of hereditary well-founded sets.
The subjects in question are irrefutably humans. It is their (our) activities that create
mathematical objects, for mathematical objects do not create themselves. Their per-
formativity lies in the capacity of mathematical objects to engender actions and
changes through the humans that use them; they are not possessed of any intrinsic
or self-subsistent agency. It is humans who perform all these actions, and it is
humans that abstract from these actions to create new mathematical objects.
Although mathematical objects are real, their reality is part of cultural activity
and its products. Like all of culture, from money, clothing and cookery to languages,
movies and ideas, mathematical objects are cultural objects. They are created in
mathematical activities, which to a large extent can be represented as language
games that take place within mathematical forms of life (Wittgenstein, 1953).
Humans acting socially, within mathematical forms of life or mathematical practices,
over time, are what create, enact, develop, and sustain mathematical processes,
concepts, and objects. This is why the assumptions of presentism are problematic.
They deny or disregard the passage of time which is ineliminable in the emergence
and being of mathematical objects. Thus, for example, Endress (2016, p. 130)
critiques John Searle’s (1995) account of social construction because ‘his entire
work fails to answer or even discuss the question of how the status of “something,”
as well as its “functions,” socially emerge’. This may not be Searle’s focus but his
analyses do partially indicate how the physical comes to have social function and so
be socially constructed. However, unless one understands their becoming, the transi-
tions in the formation of any social constructed entity, including mathematical objects,
with its shift from process to structural object, one cannot fully understand what they
are. Transitions and shifts occur over time, and these affect the constitution of the
emergent mathematical objects, so time and becoming cannot be dispensed with.
Time is implicated in mathematics in three ways. First, there is historical time
over which the mathematics in cultures comes to be and develops. I have considered
in passing how counting and numeration systems have developed from oral counting,
tally marks, and then written numerals of increasing complexity and sophistication.
Second, there is personal time in which a person’s knowledge of mathematics and
grasp of its objects develops. I will say more about this in the next section, but
development over time in this domain is undeniable.
Third, there is the foundational analogue of time, the logical development, over
the course of which, starting with primitive notions, the theoretical framework of a
mathematical theory develops. This last is not real time, but a strong analogue
because of the logical before and after relations.8 Concepts, definitions, results, and
proofs are built up in a logical sequence when the later elements depend logically
on the former ones.9
8
Lakatos (1976) points out that the ‘logical time’ of justification often subverts the ‘chronological
time’ of discovery, when the presentation of a completed proof inverts the order in which it was
created.
9
I reject a possible fourth aspect of time. This is the consideration of mathematics as having uni-
versal validity across time and space, as this contradicts the sequential emergence of mathematics,
as well as the social constructionist assumptions of this chapter.
16 P. Ernest
This is similar to Lakoff and Nunez’s (2000) conceptual metaphor that maps
from an image schema for temporal succession into the more abstract domain of
logic. They call this the logical consequence is temporal succession metaphor.
Consider how Peano arithmetic begins with two primitive notions, a starting
number, 0 say (historically Peano started with 1), and the successor function denoted
by S such that S(n) is the successor of n (Peano used ‘+1’). It also includes a number
of axioms. These make the following five assertions. Zero is a natural number.
Every natural number has a successor in the natural numbers. Zero is not the
successor of any natural number. If the successor of two natural numbers is the
same, then the two original numbers are the same. Lastly, there is the induction
axiom.10 If 0 has a certain property, and whenever n has that property, so does n + 1,
then all of the natural numbers have that property. There are also the three standard
identity axioms (reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity) specifying the properties of
the equality relation (=).
On the basis of these small beginnings, the operations of addition, multiplication,
and exponentiation can be defined as well as subtraction and division in the limited
ways they apply to natural numbers. From this modest foundation, number theory
can now be built up with increasingly complex concepts, functions, and theorems.
Ontologically, it can be said that the initial axioms bring the natural numbers into
being, within the formal theory, but as the theory progresses, new objects
corresponding to the subsequently defined concepts and functions are also brought
into being.
A realist, either a Platonist or another kind of realist, can respond to these asser-
tions with the answer that Peano arithmetic does not create the natural numbers but
merely provides an elegant and minimal axiomatization of the properties and
assumptions underpinning the already existent natural numbers. Over history and in
personal development, this is true. The historical growth in the formulation of the
natural numbers and number theory does precede Peano’s axiomatization.
Foundationally this is not true, the simpler parts of the theory logically precede the
more complex and dependent later parts. There is an irreversible flow, if not of time,
of its logical analogue from the simpler to the more complex later parts of the theory.
My argument is that we also need to allow for time in philosophy, and in particu-
lar, in ontology. Both the objects of mathematics and the mathematical identities of
persons, that I consider in the next section, grow and change their characters over
time, they are subject to processes of becoming. Ontology needs to permit emer-
gence and change in the entities for which it accounts. A static snapshot of being
will not suffice to explain of what it is formed.
10
If P is a subset of N, and 0 belongs to P, and if n belonging to P implies S(n) also belongs to P,
then P=N.
1.2.8 The Ontology of Mathematical Objects
At this point in the exposition, I have now introduced all the elements that make up
the social constructionist account of the ontology of mathematical objects.
What constitutes mathematical objects? Mathematical objects are abstract
objects in shared cultural space (the space of mathematics) constituted by rules and
agreements established in and by the community of mathematicians, many of which
are also sustained and upheld in wider society. These rules and agreements include
the tacit rules and conventions into which mathematicians are socialized as they
participate in the shared social practices of mathematics. In Wittgensteinian (1953)
terms, these include agreement in forms of life in which the actions and practices of
participants are aligned, that is, run in the same direction, often without this direction
ever being explicitly articulated. Mathematical objects gain their legitimacy through
usage, for every instance of use confirms their validity, both among mathematicians
and in wider society. In addition, the patterns of, and connections within, their usage
also gives them their meanings. Mathematical domains are also objects of
mathematics, even if they are populated with an infinite number of mathematical
objects which cannot all be named.
What ‘stuff’ are mathematical objects made from? Mathematical objects are rei-
fications built from abstracted actions on simpler mathematical objects and actions.
Humans have a capacity for and a tendency towards nominalization. Just as nouns
are created in the nominalization of verbs describing actions, so too mathematical
objects are created from the nominalization of mathematical actions. This is a pro-
cess of reification, encapsulation, and transformation in which actions become
structural objects (Sfard, 1994; Dubinsky, 1991). Furthermore, this process is cumu-
lative with increasing levels of abstraction, as actions on simpler objects become
more complex objects in themselves.
Where are mathematical objects to be found? Mathematical objects exist in the
cultural space of mathematics, a shared domain of signs and operations, whose rule-
governed uses provide their meanings. This domain is primarily added and used by
mathematicians, but also widely accessed by the public for simple constructs like
numbers, whose constitution links them to actions in the empirical world.
Why are mathematical objects objective? Mathematical objects are objective
because at any given time they appear ‘solid’ (inflexible and invariant) founded on
mathematicians’ agreements and fixed, publicly shared uses in the domain of
mathematics and beyond. Their uses are rule governed and there is widespread
agreement without ambiguity as to correct usage. Once created mathematical
objects ‘detach from their originator’ (Hersh, 1997, p. 16) becoming independent
and self-subsistent entities within a shared domain, the cultural space of mathematics.
However, if mathematical practices shift over time, so too may the rules and objects
of mathematics themselves, reflecting such cultural shifts.
Why are mathematical objects and their relationships viewed as necessary? The
necessity arises from the deontic nature of the rules of mathematics. Mathematicians’
agreements are often tacit, being obligations assumed with participation in
18 P. Ernest
mathematical practices, and these determine what ‘must be so’. The rules are
imperatives, analogous to those that must be followed in order to play chess. To
engage in mathematical activity, you must use the objects of mathematics in the
prescribed ways. Mathematics and mathematical entities are non-contingent because
they necessarily conform to and obey the rules, customs, and conventions of
mathematics. Furthermore, mathematical results and theorems necessarily follow
by logic from the axioms and assumptions laid down in mathematical theories.11
Logic also rests on deontic necessity, for it follows laid down and inflexible tracks
of reasoning that, it is accepted, ‘must be so’ (Ernest, In preparation).
Why do mathematical rules have the modal status of necessity? Mathematical
rules and customs make up the institution of mathematics. The institutionalization
of social processes such as mathematical practices grows out of the habitualization
and customs, gained through mutual observation with subsequent mutual tacit
agreement on the ‘way of doing things’ in these practices. Thus, to engage in a
mathematical practice is to be habituated into the norms, customs, and uses of the
rules and to follow and apply them unquestioningly as imperatives. Associated with
institutions such as mathematics are a set of beliefs that ‘everybody knows’ (e.g.
‘there is a set of natural numbers {1, 2, 3, 4, …}’, 1 + 1 = 2, 50 + 50 = 100, 9 > 8,
and so on). These beliefs make the institutionalized structure plausible and
acceptable, thus providing legitimation for the necessity of the institution of
mathematics (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Much of the language of mathematical
texts is imperative, in the deontic modality, as engaging in the practice (‘playing the
game’) necessitates following the tacit and explicit rules and norms embedded in,
and constituting the institution of, mathematics (Ernest, In preparation).
1.3 Human Subjects and Mathematical Identities
1.3.1 Being in Terms of Mathematical Identity
In this section, I aim to address and tentatively answer the ontological problem of
mathematics education mentioned above. This problem concerns persons, for in
mathematics education, the primary concern is with human beings, both learners
and teachers. What is the nature of a living, thinking human being? We know it is
(we are all) a biological animal but are there any special features of a human being
that pertain to mathematics and its teaching and learning mathematics?
Here, my concern is what I term mathematical identity. By this I mean those
acquired capacities in the child and adult that enable participation in mathematical
activities. This could be termed a person’s mathematical power or capability. I do
11
Note that some of the axioms and assumptions that underpin mathematics can be contingent, as
they may follow from mathematicians’ choices, albeit constrained choices. The same holds for
mathematical logic.
not mean the person’s self-image, social image, or sense of belonging to a group, be
it as a mathematician, mathematics teacher, or mathematics student. These are the
sociological senses of the term mathematical identity widely used in mathematics
education, such as in Owens (2008).
In considering the nature of individual human beings from the perspective of
their capabilities, one must not overlook the social dimension: social practices,
social groups, and even social constructions and structures. To think that individual
persons exhaust all of social being is to fall into the reductionist traps of individualism.
An active social group is more than a set of individuals. It includes a history of
interactions with other individuals expressing themselves through actions and
speech and reactions to involvement in such activities. The impact of the activities
of the groups will be to change the individuals involved to greater or lesser extent.
This is the fundamental principle of education, organizing social activities intended
to help human beings to develop and become something different.
In this section, I want to consider both a fully grown person, an adult, and a
developing person, a child. By looking at these two aspects of humanity, time has
already been admitted, because a child develops over time into an adult. I also
signalled here and above, in the introduction, that in considering the nature of
human being, there is the problem of the ideology of individualism.
1.3.2 The Ideology of Individualism
The ideology of individualism is a perspective that puts individuals first. Not only is
it a social theory favouring freedom of action for individuals over collective action,
social responsibilities, or state control. It also positions the individual as ontologically
prior to the social. Individualism may be related to the top-down position of the
modernist metanarrative in which the ‘gaze’ of a reasoning Cartesian subject with
its legitimating rational discourse is assumed to precede all knowledge and
philosophy. The rational knower comes first and is a universal intelligence that is
embodied to a greater or lesser extent in individual humans (Scheman, 1983).
Modern individualism acknowledges that human beings are embodied, and we are
more than just knowers for we also have drives. Our primary motivations are to seek
our own survival and the satisfaction of our own, individual desires. Individualism
validates this ethical self-centeredness.
According to the individualistic view, humans are entirely separate and indepen-
dently living creatures (Rand, 1961). Although it is conceded that our independence
is not wholly complete, because we do depend on each other for help in survival,
nevertheless individualism emphasizes that we are autonomous, self-motivated,
agentic creatures who have a great deal of freedom in choosing how we act and
behave. Our capacities for understanding, knowing, thinking, and feeling belong to
ourselves as individuals and to ourselves alone. Our consciousness is independent,
unique, and unconnected with that of other people (Soares, 2018).
20 P. Ernest
Individualism underpins various modern theories such as Piaget’s genetic episte-

mology. According to Piaget, children develop individually following a number of
inscribed stages in their growing understanding and capacities. There is an inbuilt
logic to cognitive development, perhaps analogous with how a living organism
grows, directed by its internal genetic programme. Thus, persons are all existen-
tially separated creatures whose actions, learning, and even whose being take place
in hermetically sealed personal domains. The social and physical environment may
help or hinder a person’s development, just like water, nutrients, and being located
in a sunny place will help a plant to grow. But the endpoint or goal of growth is
internally encoded and driven.
My criticism of this perspective is that it radically underestimates our ontological
dependence on other fellow human beings (Lukes, 1968). First of all, we originate
inside another human’s body, our mother’s, and cannot survive physically without
close proximity to and regular attention from a primary caregiver including, but not
limited to, feeding. Beyond physical survival our mental, emotional, and personality
development requires caring attention for the first decade or two of the years of our
lives (Lewis et al., 2000). That attention includes many thousands of hours of
involvement with others in social activities through which we acquire spoken
language, or an equivalent, and other aspects of cultural knowledge. The mechanism
by means of which we make our needs known and receive assurances is conversation,
understood broadly. This includes the pre-verbal enacted forms of conversation
involving touching, holding, crying, pre-verbal vocalization, facial expressions,
gestures, and other embodied actions. It is through such means that we learn the use
of words and language. We also develop our identities as persons and our emotional
being by these means. Thus, my objection to individualism is that although as
primates we are separate animals, as humans we are socially constituted beings. Our
very formation and becoming human depends essentially on the social experiences
that shape us. We would lack our special human characteristics of shared languages,
shared cultures and shared modes of thinking and being, were we hived off from
each other in the way that individualism supposes. Our identities are socially
constructed, and we could not be the full human beings that we are if we were not
socialized and enculturated.
1.3.3 Conversation and the Social Construction of Persons
Ontologically, I want to distinguish between the biological genesis of the human

animal and the cultural genesis of the human being as a person. Obviously, the
animal provides the material and biological basis of being human, but my claim is
that building on that basis, the human being needs to be socially constructed. At the
heart of social constructionism lies the dialogical pattern of interactions and
knowledge growth and warranting. The unit of analysis, the fundamental atom upon
which social constructionism is built, is that of conversation. In its minimal
manifestation, this occurs between two persons, who are communicating as
participants in a jointly shared social activity, in a social context. There is a

continuum of contexts in which conversations take place from face-to face preverbal
and verbal interactions all the way to the mediated conversations using letters,
emails, and other forms of media over extended distances and timespans.12
Conversation and dialogue are widely occurring and utilized notions across phi-
losophy and the social sciences. For the philosopher Mead (1934), conversation is
central to human being, mind and thinking. Rorty (1979) uses the concept of con-
versation as a basis for his epistemology. Wittgenstein’s (1953) key idea of language
games situated in forms of life is evidently conversational, and I draw on this heav-
ily. Many other philosophers and theorists could be cited, including Gadamer,
Habermas, Buber, Bakhtin, Volosinov, Vygotsky, Berger, and Luckmann, and more
generally, social constructionists.
Central to the social constructionist ontology is the view (shared with Gergen and Harré)
that the primary human reality is conversation. (Shotter, 1993, pp. 13)
Because of the evidently interpersonal nature of teaching, references to conver-

sation and dialogue are very widespread in the mathematics education literature.
However, concerning the philosophy and foundations of mathematics, the refer-
ences are more limited. But there is growing attention to conversational, dialogical,
and dialectical interpretations and philosophies of mathematics (Ernest, 1994, 1998;
Dutilh Novaes, 2021; Larvor, 2001).
The original form of conversation is evidently interpersonal dialogue, which
consists of persons exchanging speech, or other constellations of signs generated or
uttered during the period of contact, based on shared experiences, understandings,
interests, values, respect, activities, demands, orders, etc. Thus, in Wittgensteinian
terms, it is comprised of language games situated in human forms of life. ‘One may
view the individual’s everyday life in terms of the working away of a conversational
apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and reconstructs his subjective reality’
(Berger & Luckmann, 1966 p.152).
Two secondary forms of conversation are derived from this most immediate and
primary form. First, there is intrapersonal conversation, that is thought as constituted
and formed by conversation. According to this view, (verbal) thinking is an originally
internalized conversation with an imagined other (Vygotsky, 1978; Mead, 1934).
Intrapersonal conversation becomes much more than ‘words in the mind’, and the
conversational roles of proponent and critic discussed below are internalized,
becoming part of one’s mental functions (Ernest & Sfard, 2018).
Second, there is cultural conversation, which is an extended variant, consisting
of the creation and exchange of texts at a distance in embodied material form. I am
thinking primarily of chains of correspondence be they made up of letters, papers,
email messages, transmitted diagrams, and so forth, exchanged between persons.
Such conversations can be extended over years, lifetimes even. It can be argued that
12
In this chapter I use dialogue and conversation interchangeably. Some authors use ‘dialogue’ to
mean a democratic and ethically more valuable type of conversation. Here I am using these terms
descriptively without prescriptive attribution of greater ethical value to one over the other.
22 P. Ernest
they extend beyond a single person’s lifetime, if new persons join in and maintain
and extend the conversation. Indeed, human culture made up of the ideas, texts, and
artefacts made and shared and exchanged by people over millennia has been termed
the ‘great conversation’ (Hutchins, 1959; Oakshott, 1967).
These three forms of conversation are all social. They are either social in their
manifestation, in the case of interpersonal and cultural conversations, or social in
nature and origin, as is the case with intrapersonal conversation. In the latter,
thinking is a conversation one has with oneself, based on one’s experience of, and
participation in, interpersonal conversations (Sfard, 2008). In all manifestations,
stemming from its interpersonal origins, conversation has an underlying dialogical
form of ebb and flow, comprised of the alternation of voices in one register followed
by another in the same register or of assertion and counter assertion. Conversations
result in affirmation and bonding, unless the responses are in the less common forms
of negation, refutation, rejection, or the silencing of a speaker. Just cooperation in
the form of keeping the channel open provides feelings of enhancement for the
speakers. More generally, a fully extended concept of interpersonal conversation
including non-verbal communication, mimesis and touch encompasses all of human
interaction and is the basis for all social cohesion, identity formation, and culture.
In addition, I wish to claim that all human knowledge and knowing are conver-
sational, including mathematics. Elsewhere I have described the specific features of
mathematics that support this analysis, namely that many mathematical concepts
are at base conversational, as are the processes of discovery and justification of
mathematical knowledge (Ernest, 1994, 1998). However, a word of caution is
needed before I further develop conversational theory. Although mathematics is at
its root conversational, it is also the discipline par excellence which hides its
dialogical nature under its monological appearance. Research mathematics texts
expunge all traces of multiple voices, and human authorship is concealed behind a
rhetoric of objectivity and impersonality. This is why the claim that mathematics is
conversational might seem so surprising. It is well hidden, and it subverts the
traditional view of mathematics as disembodied, superhuman, monolithic, certain,
and eternally true.
1.3.4 The Critical Roles of Proponent and Responder

in Conversation
Conversation is the basis of all feedback, whether it be in the form of acceptance,

elaboration, reaction, asking for reasons, correction, and criticism. Such feedback is
in fact essential for all human knowledge growth and learning. In performing such
functions, the different conversational roles include the two main forms of proponent
and critic, which occur in all of the modes (inter, intra, cultural), but originate in the
interpersonal.
The role of the proponent lies in initiation, reaching out, putting forward an idea
or emergent sequence of ideas, a line of thinking, a narrative, a thought experiment,
or a reasoned argument. The aim is to share feelings, make demands, communicate
an idea, build understanding, or convince the listener (Peirce, 1931-58; Rotman,
1993). Elsewhere I have described how this is the mechanism underpinning the
construction of new mathematical knowledge (Ernest, 1994, 1998).
In contrast, there is the role of responder, including critic, in which an utterance
or communicative act is responded to in terms of acknowledgement of its
comprehensibility, acting in response to a request, actively demonstrating a shared
understanding, providing an elaboration of the content, or in other ways. In the role
of the critic, the action or utterance may be responded to in terms indicating
weaknesses in its understandability and meaning, its weaknesses as a proposal, its
syntactic flaws, how it transgresses shared rules, and so on. Critical responses need
not be negative, and the role of the responder includes that of friendly listener
following a line of thinking, narrative, or a thought experiment sympathetically in
order to understand and appreciate it, and perhaps offer suggestions for its extension
variation or improvement.
In conversation, ideally the voices or inputs of the proponent and critic alternate
in a dialectical see-saw or waltz pattern. In its most rational or mature discursive
mode, the proponent puts forward a thesis. The critic responds with a critical
antithesis. Third, the proponent, prompted by the critic, modifies the thesis and puts
forward a synthesis, a correction, or replacement that is the new thesis in the next
iteration of the cycle. Thus, we have a dialectical process approximating the thesis-
antithesis-synthesis pattern. In this cycle, the speed of the iterations can vary greatly.
In a face-to-face conversation about a mathematical problem at a whiteboard, there
can be many mathematical back-and-forth contributions in the space of an hour. But
in submitting a mathematics paper to a teacher or journal, it may be that weeks or
months pass before critical feedback is received.
From the outset, or nearly so, persons will adopt both the positions of proponent
and critic, sometimes within the same conversation. This can also be the case with
intrapersonal conversations in which, say, someone thinking about anything, such
as a mathematical problem, having internalized these roles alternates between
proponent and self-critic.
These two roles are widely present in teaching (teacher/expositor vs. examiner/
assessor) and learning (listener/engagement with learning tasks vs. responder/
reviser following formative assessment). Indeed, my claim is that these two roles
reappear throughout all human social interactions in the form of communicator and
responder, although not all elements of conversation need necessarily fall into these
two categories.
24 P. Ernest
1.3.5 The Significance of Conversation in Social Activity
Wittgenstein (1953) interprets human living in terms of his fundamental concepts,

language games, and forms of life. Language games can be understood as
conversations, and these are embedded in human forms of life, that is as social
activities. Every social activity has a purpose, a goal, and language and conversation
are communicative techniques for working together towards that goal. Examples
include mothering an infant with the goal of the infant flourishing (holding, feeding,
responding, etc.), working together in a carpentry workshop with the aim of building
furniture, working mathematical problems in a classroom with the goal of learning
mathematics, and so on.13 In all such activities, the goal of the activity comes first,
and the ways of working, the conversational communications are all about furthering
the goal. In such activities, both roles of conversation are important. Conversation
can help to focus attention, bond the participants, and direct activities.14 In this
context, the role of responder or critic is vital. When a colleague or more expert
participant demonstrates or suggests a way of working or guides the other utterances
of the sort ‘like this, not like that’ embody the role of the critic. This can take the
form of Show, Copy, Guide (correction). The teacher shows an action, the learner
copies the action, and the teacher guides and corrects the action. By teacher, I mean
anybody in the role of guiding partner and correcting responder, whether they be a
parent, peer, schoolteacher, workmate, or trainer; in short, the more knowledgeable
the other within the learner’s Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978).
Given that meaning is largely given by use, following Wittgenstein (1953), through
guiding and correcting use, the more knowledgeable other is shaping the associated
meanings for the learner.
I want to stress that this process, this mode of interaction, is vital in learning how
to conduct any practice. This is not only true in concrete production practices, such
as carpentry, baking, building brick walls, and so on. It is the mechanism by mean
of which all social rules are communicated. These rules include the correct use of
spoken language, modes of acceptable behaviour in public, how to treat people,
animals and things (ethics in practice), mathematical activities, and so on. This
conversational mechanism is how the rules and agreements that make up social
institutions are communicated and maintained. Some rules and agreements may
have explicit linguistic formulations, like laws of the land, or mathematical axioms,
but by far the majority of socially accepted rules and agreements are implicit and are
learned through copying others’ performances and the novice’s own corrected usage.
13
This is not to deny that persons working together in a shared practice can have different goals,
such as reluctant student not fully participating in the classroom practice that the teacher is
directing.
14
Conversation can also be used to further separate the interlocutors by asserting and reinforcing
power and status differences, such as a teacher imposing order on an unruly class.
1.3.6 The Realities We Inhabit
I want to start with the assumption that all humans share some indescribable under-
lying realities. My claims about this shared reality are ontological not epistemologi-
cal, we can never fully know these realities, but we learn how to operate in them. In
some unchallengeable pre-scientific and pre-philosophical sense, human beings all
have the experience of living together on the Earth. As a common species, we have
comparable bodily functions and experiences that make our sense of being who we
are and of daily life commensurable. In virtually all cases, these shared realities are
in fact the social activities in which we participate.
Heidegger’s (1962) view is that we all have a given, ‘thrown’ preconceptualized
experience of being an embodied person living in some sort of society. He celebrates
authenticity, our ‘being-here-now’ existence (Dasein), an attitude that acknowledges
our multiple existence in the linked but disparate worlds of our experience: the
bodily, mundane, discursive, political, professional, institutional, and cultural
realms. Our experience in these social and worldly forms-of-life is taken for granted.
It provides the grounds on which all knowing and philosophy begins, although no
essential knowledge or interpretation of the basal lived reality is either assumed or
possible. This is a bottom-up perspective that contrasts with the top-down position
of modernist metanarratives in which a legitimating rational discourse and the
‘gaze’ of a reasoning Cartesian subject is assumed to precede all knowledge and
philosophy. The rational knower does not come first, he (and I use the masculine
deliberately) is not a universal disembodied intelligence, but a construction with
historically shaped sensibilities. Once again, this illustrates the need to accommodate
growth, development, emergence, and becoming in ontology.
Virtually all of our capacities are shaped by the social practices in which we
participate. We could not learn, understand, use, or make mathematics unless we
were educated, language and sign using social beings with personal histories and
mathematical learning trajectories. Like every (academic or school) subject,
mathematical knowledge requires an already present knower, and this must be a
fleshy, embodied human being with both developmental history (including an
educational history) and a social presence and location. Obvious as these statements
are, they have been ruled irrelevant and inadmissible by generations of philosophers
and mathematicians that subscribe to an absolutist or Platonist philosophies of
mathematics.
Paramount amongst the realities we inhabit are the social institutions of which
we are a part. Our understandings, as evidenced by the ways in which we participate,
are shaped by long histories of conversational exchanges, situated in various social
practices. These formative conversations have not only inducted us as participating
entrants to, and members of, the institutional practices and domains. They have also
shaped our actions so as to be maintainers and onwards developers of the social
institutions. Social institutions and social realities are kept alive and afloat
(metaphors for continuing and enduring existence) by the myriad actions of the
participants in reaffirming the conventions and rules intrinsic to the institutions.
26 P. Ernest
These reaffirming actions are directed through conversations with both insiders, that
is participant members, and outsiders, demarcating the rules, norms, conventions,
and boundaries that define and constitute the institutions and entry to the associated
social practices.
1.3.7 Conversation and the Genesis of Thinking
An important part of conversation theory concerns how it is implicated in the gen-

esis of thinking and constitutive of thought. To sketch the genesis of thinking, we
start with a human baby with its sense impressions of its world of experience, prob-
ably beginning in a rudimentary way during its period of gestation. Some of these
sense data originate from outside its own body, such as from light (impacting via
seeing), from sound (via hearing), from touch (via skin pressure nerve arousal).
Some of these experiences originate from within the baby’s own body, such as
hunger, bodily discomfort, and what we might see as spontaneous emotions. These
two sources of experience are deeply interwoven. The distinction is far from abso-
lute since sensory inputs must be interpreted in both cases. I believe that the baby
notices invariants and starts to impose some order, structure, or pattern on its expe-
riences giving rise to what Vygotsky (1978) calls spontaneous concepts. What such
concepts are I cannot say precisely but they may not only include regularities in
sensations but also regularities in responses such as movements, vocalizations, etc.
Undoubtedly, these concepts vary and grow over time; they are not static and need
not be constant. The baby is not isolated in this world of experiences, actions, and
concepts because the baby is involved in preverbal dialogues, comprising recipro-
cal actions and what we might call signalling with others, most notably the mother
or primary caregiver.
At this stage, it is hard to know what the baby’s thinking is like. Presumably there
will be ‘inner’ sensations and experiences such as pleasure and discomfort or
displeasure, recognition of familiar persons, objects and experiences, desires,
associated emotions and feelings, sensory images recalled from memory. There
may well be reactions to familiar and non-familiar persons, objects, and experiences,
accompanied by emotions such as interest, curiosity, desire. The baby will also
experience negative emotions including anger, anxiety, or fear, in response to such
experiences as being startled by sudden loud noises. What the flow of ideas and
experiences brought into consciousness is like I cannot say, but I expect it will be
led by sensory stimuli, whether external or internal in origin.
Now we move to the next stage, although of course this overlaps with the prever-
bal phase, and ultimately engulfs it, as I shall argue. Other persons, such as the
mother, will start to use words with the baby, beginning a verbal dialogue, accom-
panying embodied exchanges such as looking, touching, holding, rocking, and so
on. There are intermediary phases in the development of language such as the baby
babbling in what we can interpret as pretend speech in the ‘game of talking’. After
some exposure to adult speech, the baby will start to use words back, mummy,
daddy, ball, dog, or whatever. The baby starts to use these words in a regular and
recognizable way. At this stage, the baby/young child is starting to develop what
Vygotsky (1962) terms scientific concepts, which would be better termed social or
cultural concepts. The use and mastery of language takes quite a long time and
during this time the child develops and uses a growing set of linguistic capabilities.
Of course, this development is triggered by engagement in a growing range of
activities with accompanying dialogues in different contexts, with different
purposes, and with different but overlapping vocabularies.
Somewhat later during childhood, after the acquisition of spoken language, most
children also start to learn to read and write, and these encounters with written
language may also feed into the development of their thinking. This includes written
arithmetic and other parts of mathematics. However, I won’t speculate on the impact
of reading and writing on thinking beyond its role as an add-on and expansion of
spoken language.
A second strand of development concerns attention, which is part of human
agency. A baby turns to look at objects or people that interest it or that move and
draw their attention. Part of this is following their mother’s or caregiver’s gaze
(Deák, 2015). Of course, other sensory stimuli also capture its attention, sounds,
touch, smells, tastes, pain, and so on. As the child develops, its power of self-
directed attention grows and becomes increasingly volitional. In addition to
choosing what to attend to in its experiential (perceptual) world, the child can
choose and initiate its own activities. It can direct its attention to different activities
including toys, games, video, TV programmes, touch screens, nature, animals, and
other things. One of the most important things that a child attends to is other humans
and dialogue. The child attends to many utterances from others and participates in
dialogues.
So now the stage is set for me to propose what thinking is or at least might be.
According to Vygotsky (1962), the child’s spontaneous and scientific (that is,
linguistically acquired) concepts meld or at least start to interact and form one inner
system of concepts from quite early on. Words and linguistic utterances have been
experienced in various contexts and the uses they are put to and the activities they
are a part constitute their initial meanings. Young children will have spoken
dialogues with themselves in which they may instruct themselves mimicking what
they have experienced with more capable, older speakers. After a while, these self-
directed conversations become silent, internalized but perhaps visible through sub-
vocal lip movements.
On this basis, children’s private thinking consists of an inner dialogue the person
has with themselves. This is learned from participation in conversations and
discourse with others. But this inner dialogue is not just made up of words – it is
supplemented by and may even have elements replaced by visual imagery, memory
episodes, feelings (emotions, etc.) within the experienced stream of ideas. An
associational logic is at play so perceived external persons, objects, or events may
trigger associations that become contents in the inner dialogue. Thus thinking, the
inner dialogue, may be a string or cluster of meanings, concepts, or reasonings. This
may be prompted by external stimuli, such as conversations/speech from someone
28 P. Ernest
else, experiences or events in the world, or may be internally generated, such as

when I solve a mathematical problem mentally. The stream of ideas, etc., that I
experience in thought is multimodal and can involve words and associated concepts,
imagery both real and imagined, smell and touch impressions, or memories of them,
etc. We also have some control over this internal dialogue, we can choose to
remember something, direct our attention to some idea, memory, problem, etc. Of
course, things also come unbidden to our thought, either because of some deep
unconscious trigger or an association that draws our attention aside or onwards.
Although our thought originates in interpersonal conversation, in becoming
intrapersonal conversation, it differs from public speech. For as conversation is
internalized, it combines with our preverbal thought, sensory perceptions, visual
images, emotions to become a richer multimodal conversation we have with
ourselves. All these aspects as well as personal meanings are attached to the words
and signs we use. Thus, we can think spatially as well as verbally. Vygotsky (1962)
argues that the contents of our mind are not structured the way our speech is. When
we engage in social, interpersonal conversations we also communicate multimodally
using gestures, expressions, tone of voice, objects, and other props, as well as our
oral linguistic utterances.
Our thinking, this internal stream of ideas and thoughts, is a dialogue in three
ways. First, learning to speak is by means of participation in dialogue and
conversation. So languaging is a process driven by public speech, that is words and
speech. These evoke meaningful concepts and reasoning responses in us – their
content and form are irrevocably tied in with their origin, that is spoken dialogue or
conversation. Vygotsky is often interpreted as saying that speech and dialogue
become internalized. This is of course a metaphorical rather than a literal description.
Children learn to imitate phrases. I expect they can also imagine the sounds of these
utterances subvocally, that is solely in the mind. So, exposure to speech leads to
something like speech in the mind.
Second, our streams of thought come in segments. How these are demarcated or
segmented varies, but each segment will have a coherent meaning. Each of these
thought segments evokes an association or follow on, a response or reply. Thus, we
follow each thought by its echo or answer, like question and answer, thus exhibiting
the dialogue form. Just as in a spoken dialogue, we have choices as to how to choose/
make our replies thus steering the conversation. Likewise in our internal dialogue,
we can choose how to follow on a line of thought. Of course, some people with
compulsions find it difficult to steer away from a recurrent pattern of thought.
Indeed, this can happen to any of us if we are stressed by a difficult situation or
conflicting or difficult demands or an unsatisfactory ending to a previous
conversation. So, all my general claims must be hedged with caveats because less
typical events and cases can always occur.
Third, our thinking is dialogical when we are reacting to an artefact – a piece of
writing, painting, a performance, or even someone talking including a lecture. The
attended-to part of the artefact is one voice in the conversation and our reactive or
reflective thoughts constitute the second voice, which we may or may not utter
in public.
Our internal dialogue can have a variety of functions. It might involve planning
some action, a solution to a problem, a plan for making something, the development
of ideas. This is imagination at work in thought. This may involve all sorts of
meanings including concepts, word meanings (associations), visual imagery,
practical sequences of actions. However, such planning or creative imagination
need not anticipate or take place separately from our activities. For often we can be
involved in making something, such as me writing these observations, and not know
beyond a hazy idea, if one has that, where our stream of ideas or words – our internal
dialogue – is going to lead. Often our next step in the creative process is enacted as
the moment arises. It is a choice, often what feels like the right choice, possibly the
necessary choice, but made in the moment.
1.3.8 Extending the Meaning as Use Theory
Following Wittgenstein (1953), I have adopted his operationalization that the mean-
ing of a word is in many cases given by its use. However, this needs disambiguation,
for ‘use’ has multiple meanings. The particular use which I make when I utter the
word ‘red’ or ‘addition’, say, at a specific event within a particular form of life is one
such enactment of meaning. But the system of use or usage has another meaning.
This includes a systematic grammatical theory of usage that describes past correct
usages and potentially includes future correct uses or at least the rules that will
guide them. De Saussure made this point when distinguishing Parole (utterances of
spoken language) from Langue (the system of language). Specific uses are one thing
but systematic patterns of use which entail imperatives about future specific uses are
another.
What one can say is that the spoken utterance meaning of use comes first. Use in
the systematic, theoretical sense is secondary to specific instances of participation
in conversations and making or hearing utterances. (Parole precedes Langue.) There
is a history (we all have histories) of language uses, and we all have a set of memories
of instances of language uses – our own and others. In addition, these memories will
include the corrections we have received, observed, or given, via conversations,
which have shaped our capacities for spoken language. In fact, we may not remember
many such corrections, but our linguistic know-how will have been shaped by such
instances of correction and correct usage, from childhood on. Many persons will not
have explicit or full theories of word use, but have the capacity to make and
understand meanings from word utterances based on their implicit know-how.
In the present context, the significance is that the meaning of a word as given by
a specific utterance or instance of use is only partial. In the broader sense, meaning
as use depends on a whole pattern of usage to give a better indication of meaning.
This pattern might only be encapsulated in a tacit set of guidelines or intuitions
whose function is, in effect, to regulate which uses are correct and which are not.
At this point, Robert Brandom’s (2000) inferentialist account of meaning is help-
ful. For Brandom, the meaning of words and sentences is largely given by their use
30 P. Ernest
in language, but it is a central aspect of use, namely the nexus of inferential connec-
tions with other words and sentences. For Brandom, the inferentialist meaning of a
word or sentence S is its connections through reasoning with antecedents (reason-
ings leading to) S and its consequences (reasonings that follow from S). These uses
are shown through enacted utterances, but meaning reflects past uttered links and is
always open towards the future. So, the current meaning of a word or sentence, at
any time, is partial and never final, for further patterns of use will supplement the
meaning. As Wittgenstein (1978) says, a new proof of a proposition, changes the
meaning of the proposition. Adding logical antecedents or consequents to a sen-
tence changes its meaning.
1.3.9 Dialogic Space
I have considered how children acquire language and the ability to communicate
meanings. In addition, I have described how children internalize conversation as a
basis for their thinking. On this basis, I can now offer an account of the zone in
which meanings are communicated and shared, termed dialogic space (Wegerif,
2013; Lambirth, 2015). This is the virtual space in which words, gestures, and signs
are uttered, perceived, and responded to. Dialogic space or spaces are both public
and private. A conversation between persons has 'visible' multimodal utterances
which are public, but also runs through our private spaces of understanding where
we attend to the dialogue and create or conjure up associations, narratives, imagery,
emotional responses in our reception of the dialogue. We may engage in an
intrapersonal dialogue in response.
Figure 1.1 represents some of the basic elements of dialogic space and its partici-
pants. I emphasized the key actions with of italics. As participants, through listening
we pay attention to what is being said, understanding it in terms of building the
meaning links to what we know (the network of words and concepts to which we
have personal access). Through understanding we take personal ownership of the
meaning links to antecedent and consequent expressions in our network of reasoning
relations. When we have an expressive impulse, we loosely assemble the idea or
remark and express it as our chosen supplement to the dialogue that we utter. (Note
that our remark is not usually created in private and then uttered. It normally comes
into being as it is uttered.) Every participant in the dialogue does this. Participants
also own a set of rules about how the dialogue should be conducted in terms of
participative membership, the appropriate form of contributions, and the conceptual
content of contributions. This overall process is illustrated in Fig. 1.1.
Thus, in addition to exploring and developing the ideas under discussion (the
content of the dialogue) participants’ contributions can also be utterances that are
about regulating or policing the dialogue based on rules that should reflect shared
values and democratic principles. For example, in a dialogue between friends and
colleagues, one or more contributors may intervene about imbalances in
contributions, such as some participant speaking too much or another being
Person 1
Person 3
Personal Personal
corner 3 corner 1
DIALOGICAL
SPACE
* Utterances
* Shared
Rules
Utters Listens
Chosen supplement Attention

Ideas Meaning, New links
Expressive impulse ← Ownership
Person 2
Fig. 1.1 Dialogic space with its personal corners
encouraged to contribute and be attended to. There can also be rules-based utterances
on the content of the dialogue, which may be commenting on, redirecting, or
curtailing some contribution to steer the direction or thrust of the dialogue in terms
of the content and concepts discussed. But the most important part is the pattern of
utterances that extend and develop the subject matter, the joint understanding of a
topic, the solution of a shared problem, or a creative ensemble made by the group.
Not mentioned but underpinning the dialogue is participation in a shared activity (a
form of life) which may be purely conversational or may be making or doing
something, accompanying the conversation.
1.3.10 Roles and Power Differentials in Conversation
In any dialogue, persons as active agents in that dialogue take on a variety of roles.
Two of the most important are speaker and listener. Speaking can involve offering
new links that are responses to the previous utterances. Such responses can build on,
extend what was previously said. Or they can interrogate and question what was
said. Listening can be actively following the narrative and making sense of it
through linking utterances with our own concepts and meaning associations. We can
follow the flow of a narrative adding our own associations and responses, which we
may (or may not) utter audibly or publicly. We can listen critically whereby we
32 P. Ernest
interrogate, question, or challenge the narrative as we are hearing it. We can make
these reactions public or keep the thoughts to ourselves. And we should never forget
that we are embodied, not just passive in listening or active in speaking – we are all
the while engaged in bodily activities beyond the actions of communicating
(vocalizing, facial expressions, arm, and bodily movements) for we can also be
drinking coffee, walking along a road, or even building a model or material artefact
together in some shared activity in our joint form of life.
In addition, there are power differentials between contributors in most dialogues,
based on personal force or institutional authorization. Table 1.1 lists some sample
types of conversation with the relative power of the participants indicated.
Table 1.1 exemplifies the more powerful within institutionalized groups as those,
not only with knowledge of the rules (for progressing towards the group goal) but,
most importantly, being institutionally authorized to impose the rules in regulating
the activity. In informal groups, power is softer and may shift among participants to
those with better knowledge of the rules, but without institutional authorization,
they may be challenged and have to try to demonstrate the validity of the rules they
are suggesting.
Table 1.1 Types of conversation and the relative power of participants

More powerful participants Less powerful participants
Type of conversation (MPP) (LPP)
Family – Parenting Parents – more knowledgeable Children
and laying down behavioural
rules
Working in learner’s zone More knowledgeable parent, Learner
of proximal development teacher, or peer demonstrating
rules, etc.
Friends in discussion Power may move around group Power may move around group
Collaborative work on Asserter of mathematical rules or Proposer of next step needing to
school mathematics moves is MPP at the time be regulated (LPP at the time)
problem
Collaborative research Power moves around group Working researchers less
project powerful if there is principal
researcher
Informal conversation Power moves around group unless Power moves around group
between colleagues power hierarchy has been unless power hierarchy has been
established established
School maths class Teacher directs teaching and the Student follows teacher
learning activities instructions and rules for
participation
School maths examination Examiners Students (examinees)
University seminar Visiting lecturer Audience – but audience can
take some power in the
questions slot
Journal editorial board Editor, referees Author
1.3.11 Mathematical Enculturation
Mathematical enculturation takes place over the course of development from child-
hood to adulthood. Prior to elementary schooling commencing at 5 to 7 years of
age, the child will typically gain a growing mastery of spoken language and very
likely engage in simple number and shape games. Typically, these will include
learning and using the names of simple geometric shapes (square, circle, triangle,
ball, etc.) and spoken number names (one, two, three, four, five, etc.) as well as the
correct order of these first few names. There will also very likely be some learning
of the single digit numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.).
Such activities will continue in kindergarten and early elementary school plus
the introduction of elementary operations, most notably addition and the addition
sign ‘+’. Mathematical activity for learners typically shifts from being wholly
spoken, to spoken and textual, with a shift towards the dominance of text for
children’s activities. Children very likely will engage in enactive activities (counting
objects such as buttons), activities presented in iconic forms (working simple tasks
mostly shown with repeated pictures, such as simple flower pictures), moving on to
symbolic work with texts using words and mathematical symbols.
Perhaps the most central activity in the mathematics classroom is the imposition
of mathematics learning tasks on students (Ernest, 2018a). These will be orally or
textually presented and may be enacted in a variety of media. But over the years of
schooling, throughout elementary and secondary (high school), these will become
almost exclusively presented via written texts. A mathematical learning task:
1. Is an activity that is externally imposed or directed by a person or persons in
power representing and on behalf of a social institution (e.g. teacher).
2. Is subject to the judgement of the persons in power as to when and whether it is
successfully completed.
3. Is a purposeful and directional activity that requires human actions and work in
the striving to achieve its goal.
4. Requires learner acceptance of the imposed goal, explicitly or tacitly, in order
for the learner to consciously work towards achieving it15.
5. Requires and consists of working with texts: both reading and writing texts in
attempting to achieve the task goal.
6. A mathematical task begins with a mathematical representation (text) and
requires the application of mathematical rules to transform the representation, in
a series of steps, to a required end form (e.g. in a calculation, the numerical
answer).
Power is at work in a mathematical task at two levels. First, at the social level, the
teacher imposes the task and requires that it be attempted by the learner. Second,
within the task itself, power is at work through the permitted rules and transformations
15
Gerofsky (1996) adds that tasks, especially ‘word problems’, also bring with them a set of
assumptions about what to attend to and what to ignore among the available meanings.
34 P. Ernest
of the text. In other words, the apprentice mathematician must act as a conduit
through which the imperatives of mathematics work. They must follow certain
prescribed actions in the correct sequence. As the tasks become more complex, the
apprentice mathematician will have some choices as to which rules to apply in
constructing the sequence of actions or operations towards the solution, but
otherwise all is imperative driven. Mathematics is a rule-driven game, and the rules
are a major part of the institution of mathematics.
Later in the process of mathematical enculturation, the institutional rule-based
nature of mathematics is internalized, and apprentice mathematicians adopt a more
general concept of mathematical task that includes self-imposed tasks that are not
externally imposed and not driven by direct power relationships.16 However, in
research mathematicians’ work, although tasks may not be individually subject to
power relations, particular self-selected and self-imposed tasks may be undertaken
within a culture of performativity that requires measurable outputs. So, power
relations are at play at a level above that of individual tasks. Even where there is no
external pressure to perform, the accomplishment of a self-imposed task requires
the internationalization and tacit understanding of the concept of task. Such an
understanding includes the roles of assessor and critic, based on the experience of
social power relations. This faculty provides the basis for an individual’s own
judgement as to when a task is successfully completed. Within institutional rule-
based mathematics imperatives are at work, the dominant actions (rules) inscribed
within the texts themselves. The role of the critic is to judge that the institutional
rules of mathematics are applied appropriately and followed faithfully.
Mathematical learning tasks are important because they introduce the learner to
the rules of mathematics and its textual imperatives. For this reason, such tasks
make up the bulk of school activity in the teaching and learning of mathematics.
During most of their mathematics learning careers, which in Britain continues from
5 to 16 years and beyond, students mostly work on textually presented tasks. I
estimate that an average British child works on 10,000 to 200,000 tasks during the
course of their statutory mathematics education. This estimate is based on the not
unrealistic assumptions that children each attempt 5 to 50 tasks per day, and that
they have a mathematics class every day of their school career (estimated as
200 days per annum).17
A typical school mathematics task concerns the rule-based transformation of
text. Such tasks consist of a textual starting point, the task statement. These texts can
be presented multimodally, with the inscribed starting point expressed in written
language or symbolic form, possibly with illustrative iconic representations or
16
There are also more open mathematical tasks such as problem solving (choose your own meth-
ods) and investigational work (pose your own questions) in school but these are not frequently
encountered.
17
Much of the mathematics education literature concerns optimal teaching approaches intended to
enhance cognitive, affective, critical reasoning or social justice gains (prescriptive). Here my con-
cern is just with teaching as a process that enables students to learn mathematics, without prob-
lematizing the teaching itself, that is, purely descriptive.
figures. In the classroom, these are typically accompanied by a metatext, spoken

instructions from the teacher. Learners carry out such set tasks by writing a sequence
of texts, including figures, literal and symbolic inscriptions, ultimately arriving,
when successful, at a terminal text which is the required ‘answer’. Sometimes this
sequence of actions involves the serial inscription of distinct texts. For example, in
the case of the addition of two fraction numerals with distinct denominators or the
solution of an equation in linear algebra. Sometimes this involves the elaboration or
superinscription of a single piece of text, such as the carrying out of 3-digit column
addition or the construction of a geometric figure. It can also combine both types of
inscriptions. In each of these cases, there is a common structure. The learner is set a
task, central to which is an initial text, the specification or starting point of the task.
The learner is then required to apply a series of transformations to this text and its
derived products, thus generating a finite sequence of texts terminating, when
successful, in a final text, the ‘answer’. This answer text represents the goal state of
the task, which the transformation of signs is intended to attain.18 In some solution
sequences, new texts will be freshly introduced, such as axioms, lemmas, or
methods, and therefore are not strictly transformations of the preceding text but play
an integral part in the overall sequence.
Formally, a successfully completed mathematical task is a sequential transforma-
tion of, say, n texts or signs (‘Si’) written or otherwise inscribed by the learner, with
each text implicitly derived by n-1 rule based transformations (‘⇨i’).19 This can be
shown as the sequence:
S11 S 22 S33 n 1 S n
S1 is a representation of the task as initially inscribed or recorded by the learner.

This may be the text presented in the original task specification. However, the initial
given text presenting the task may have been curtailed, or may be represented in
some other mode than that given, such as a figure, when first inscribed by the learner.
Sn is a representation of the final text, intended to satisfy the goal requirements as
interpreted by the learner. The rhetorical requirements and other rules at play within
the social context and following mathematical imperatives (the mathematical rules)
determine which sign representations Sk and which steps, ⇨k for k < n, are accept-
able. Indeed, the selection of mathematical rules applied, and the transformed rep-
resentations inscribed by the learner, up to and including the final goal representation
18
I use the word text broadly to include whatever multimodal representations are required in the
task including writing, symbolism, diagrams and even 3-D models.
19
Normally learners of school mathematics are not expected to specify the transformations used.
Rather they are implicitly evidenced in the difference between the antecedent and the subsequent
text in any adjacent (i.e., transformed) pair of texts in the sequence. In some forms of proof, includ-
ing some versions of Euclidean geometry not generally included in modern school curricula, a
proof requires a double sequence. The first is a standard deductive proof and the second a parallel
sequence providing justifications for each step, that is specifications for each deductive rule appli-
cation. Only in cases like this are the transformations specified explicitly.
36 P. Ernest
(Sn), are the major focus for negotiation and correction between learner and teacher,
both during production and after the completion of the transformational sequence.
This focus will be determined according to whether in the given classroom context,
the learner is required only to display the terminal text (the answer) or a sequence
of transformed texts representing its derivation, whether calculation, problem solu-
tion, proof, or application of mathematics (Ernest, 2018a).
The extended apprenticeship in completing many thousands of mathematical
tasks over the years of schooling, where successful, represents an enculturation into
the social practice of mathematics. For persons going on to use mathematics
professionally in their careers, or going on to be professional mathematicians, this
apprenticeship is extended and intensified with introduction to more abstract and
complex mathematical topics with a greater range of more sophisticated rules, as
well as more demanding mathematical tasks. This occurs over the years of college
or university specialization in mathematics. The extensive involvement and
engagement with mathematical practices and activities or tasks result in a deeper
engagement with mathematical rules. Some of these rules become automatic and
are identified with the nature of mathematical objects. Imperatives become inscribed
in mathematical objects so they cannot be seen as existing without what are deontic
rules prescribing their possible uses. The journeyman mathematician accesses a
cultural realm of mathematical objects that have all the appearances of solid real
objects (within their own realm) whose nature necessitates a limited and prescribed
range of properties and powers. These are embodiments of the rules that brought the
objects of mathematics into being and limit their possible uses.
At this stage, the student or apprentice mathematician has developed into a prac-
ticing mathematician, and signs, symbols, and concepts of mathematics correspond
to full independent mathematical objects embodying the restrictions and rules of
their possible uses and the community-wide agreements as to their constitutions and
operability.
During the pursuit of mathematical activities, mathematicians and others engage
in extended work with texts and symbols in dialogic space. This crystallizes into
‘math-worlds’ where the objects of mathematics have a speaker-independent
existence and reality. It is not only these objects whose independent being is
confirmed and strengthened. It is also persons’ identities as mathematicians that is
validated by their access to dialogic space and its population of mathematical
objects. However, this description is deceptive, for it is the submission to
internalization and absorption of the many rules, norms, and tacit agreements
through which mathematical activities and objects are constituted, that makes a
mathematician. Just as these institutions bring forth the objects of mathematics, so
too they bring forth the special powers and capabilities of the mathematician qua
mathematician. Namely, a person empowered mathematically through obedience to
the deontics of mathematics. Of course, a mathematician is not beaten down and
cowed through this submission. The many thousand-fold experiences of successful
pursuit of the goals of mathematical tasks have shaped, sharpened, and directed the
desire of the mathematician to answer the questions, solve the problems, pursue the
holy grail of proving new theorems. A chess master internalizes the rules of chess
and turns them into intuitions of desirable outcomes many moves ahead. Similarly,
the mathematician’s rule-shaped intuition suggests where actions and processes on
mathematical objects in dialogic space may lead.
In this account, conversation provides the epistemic and ontic basis of mathemat-
ical knowledge and object existence. It grounds them in physically embodied,
socially situated acts of human knowing, communication, and agreement. Because
of the tight rules, norms, and conventions, mathematical conversation has minimal
of ambiguity compared to every other domain of discourse. Nevertheless, the philo-
sophical bases of mathematics are in the final analysis deontic, resting on the shared
explicit rules and hidden norms of mathematical practice, as communicated via
conversation. Conversation includes the roles of proponent and critic, and both of
these roles are necessary in fruitful conversation, at any level. Their existence is the
reason why a mathematician stranded alone on a desert island for 20 years proving
theorems is still engaging in a social practice.
1.4 Conclusion
This concludes my treatment of the ontological problems of mathematics and

mathematics education. I have argued that mathematical objects are formed out of
actions on simpler objects, which are abstracted and reified into self-subsistent
objects. All the actions involved in this process are heavily constrained by the rules
of mathematics which are entangled with and woven into the objects. The norms
and constraints that make mathematical objects possible are necessary elements of
their existence. Because of these definitionally necessary limits, the objects are
necessary objects. Their necessity is the product of the deontic modality, which in
describing mathematical objects, indicates how their world ought to or must be
according to the norms and expectations of mathematical culture. Contrary to the
traditional view that accounts of mathematical objects are in epistemic or alethic
modality expressing possibility, prediction, and truth, the deontic modality of
mathematical language indicates an obligation that becomes a necessity. If mathe-
matical objects exist, and they are present to all mathematicians and students of
mathematics to a varying degree, then ‘this’ is how they must be. Here, ‘this’ refers
to the necessary character of mathematical objects as the conventions and rules
require them to be.
The ontological problem of mathematics education concerns the nature of math-
ematicians and students of mathematics. I have argued that the formation of their
mathematical identities, which are perhaps only a small part of their overall beings
as persons, develop through mathematical enculturation. The key element of this
process is subjection to rules, conventions, orders, instructions that must be obeyed,
at three levels, during engagement with mathematical activities.
First, there is the social, interpersonal level. In schooling, the teacher sets the
tasks and their goals. However, they may be hedged, the teacher issues orders to the
children that requires that they engage in the set mathematical activities or tasks.
38 P. Ernest
The teacher also demonstrates and reinforces the rules and solution processes that
the learners must use to attempt to achieve these goals. There may be a limited
degree of flexibility as in some tasks the learner can select their preferred method of
solution from amongst the approved methods or their variations. But overall, this is
the level made up of the imperatives issued directly by the teacher in social or
interpersonal space.
The second level of necessity is that inscribed within the texts of the tasks. The
most common verb forms in mathematics, both in school and research texts, are
imperatives requiring the reader to complete the activity in prescribed ways (Ernest,
2018a; Rotman, 1993). Such prescriptions may be tacit, but there is a repertoire of
agreed rules and methods to be employed. Here, the key characteristic is that the
imperatives are in the text themselves.
Third, there are the tacit and explicit rules and conventions of mathematics that
delimit the permitted actions and textual transformations. These are part of the
culture of mathematics and a key element of what students and practitioners pick up
and internalize as a residue of the myriad conversational exchanges in the dialogic
space of mathematics. These make up much of what is termed the knowledge of
mathematics, that which is learned through mathematics education. It is these rules
that must be selected from and utilized in the performance of mathematical activities
and tasks by students of mathematics and mathematicians.
Thus, my two big ontological problems, the nature of mathematical objects and
the nature of mathematical identities, with their associated powers, converge. It is
the rules and conventions of mathematical culture that help build up and constitute
both of these types of entity. The objects of mathematics are abstracted actions
encapsulating these rules. Mathematical identities are shaped, constituted, and
constrained through the internalizations of these rules.
This convergence in explanations is why an interdisciplinary approach to these
problems is necessary. I am tempted to claim that only such a multidisciplinary
analysis, drawing on philosophy, linguistics, mathematics education, and other
disciplines, can address both of these two problems together. Furthermore, the
solutions offered are interdependent and co-constituting. Interacting with
mathematical objects is an essential dimension in the construction of mathematical
identities. Coming to, becoming and being a mathematician depends essentially on
engagement with and using mathematical objects. Conversely, the formation and
maintenance of mathematical objects depends on human capacities to actively
maintain cultures through extended conversational interactions, including the
capacities for abstraction and rule formation. Only through the induction of persons
into the culture of mathematics are mathematical identities formed and the culture
of mathematics, which is the location of mathematical objects, maintained and
extended.
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Chapter 2
Scientific Revolutions: From Popper
to Heisenberg
Michael Otte and Mircea Radu
2.1 Introduction
Following Charles S. Peirce we assume that all thinking takes place in signs.
Thinking is representation, i.e., is semiotic in nature. Each representation is a gen-
eralization. And any generalization is accompanied by a sense of liberation that can
be as deceptive as it is empowering.
For example, to justify statements like 2 + 2 = 4 or 7 + 5 = 12 (to take Kant’s
examples), one first argues, as in discourse on ordinary knowledge, that the proposi-
tions express matters of fact reacted by “synthetic construction in pure intuition”
(Kant). The justification process however does not stop here. In time addi-
tional reflection work about the matter continues in search of a self-contained unify-
ing theoretical explanation of the isolated facts in case. The arithmetical axioms as
put forward by people like Hermann Grassmann, Giuseppe Peano, or Richard
Dedekind are theoretical explanations of this kind. Once this point is reached, the
quest for the nature of numbers is answered by the formal-axiomatic approach.
From an axiomatic viewpoint, however, numbers can be nearly anything. Logicians
like Frege and Russell saw this consequence of the axiomatic explanation of the
number concept as a problematic form of reductionism. They attempted to provide
alternative explanations of the number concept, based on logic and conceptual
thinking rather than generalization as practiced in terms of formal theories. Paul
Mouy echoes these issues by proposing a social and cultural genealogy of the
M. Otte
Department of Mathematics, Universität Bielefeld, Melle, Germany
M. Radu (*)
Oberstufen-Kolleg des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen an der Universität Bielefeld,
Bielefeld, Germany
e-mail: mircea.radu@uni-bielefeld.de

44 M. Otte and M. Radu
necessity concept. In our history, necessity initially manifests itself as blind fate. It
is initially rooted in
(…) circumstance and leads men to their destruction, which perfidiously drove Oedipus to
incest and patricide. A primitive idea. Thanks to mathematical proof, this concept passes
without change of name from the exterior to the interior, from things to spirit, from the
domain of mysticism to the domain of reason. (…) It becomes what man by force of reason
compels himself to obey. It constitutes an obligation on the part of the mind, an intellectual
value. (Mouy, 1971, vol.II, p. 48–57, p. 49)
In a sense, from the perspective of Frege and Russell, axiomatics appears a return to
the type of formal “exterior” necessity criticized by Mouy. The perpetual quest for
this type of shift from the “exterior” to the “interior”, which Mouy ultimately links
to mathematics and to mathematical proof, constitutes the fundamental theme of
many ongoing debates in mathematics education. Frege and Russell see logic as the
means of achieving such a shift. Logic and Ethics are understood by them as norma-
tive sciences. According to Peirce, himself a logician, the situation looks different:
(…) it is generally said that the three normative sciences are logic, ethics, and esthetics,
being the three doctrines that distinguish good and bad; Logic in regard to representations
of truth, Ethics in regard to efforts of will, and Esthetics in objects considered simply in
their presentation. Now that third Normative science, (…) is evidently the basic normative
science upon which as a foundation, the doctrine of ethics must be reared to be surmounted
in its turn by the doctrine of logic. (Peirce, CP 5.36)
For Hegel, Esthetics has the special meaning that in it the essence of that which
appears to us is adequately presented. Esthetic perception is most likely to do justice
to the essence of appearance (Hegel, 1950, Ästhetik, vol.2, p. 606).
In a sense, our chapter is an attempt to clarify the meaning of the latter claim, by
exploring Thomas Kuhn’s concept of scientific revolution and some of the debates
triggered by it. This leads us to a reexamination of a series of episodes in the history
of science and art. We begin by highlighting some aspects of Karl Popper’s under-
standing of the logic of research.
2.2 A Reassuring Fact?
In the foreword to his well-known book Vermutungen und Widerlegungen

(Conjectures and Refutations), Karl Popper informs the reader that his book con-
sists of variations on the comforting fact “that we are able to learn from our errors,
from the mistakes that we have made.” According to Popper, this represents the
foundation of scientific progress (Popper, 2009, XIII). But how helpful is this state-
ment in explaining the evolution of scientific theories?
Popper’s view of science is based on the following criterion: Only beliefs that are
susceptible of being falsified count as scientific ones. This criterion, of course,
opens a fundamental gap between science and mathematics. Consider, for example,
the hypothesis that we can reach all natural numbers by counting. We can neither
prove nor falsify this hypothesis, but have to treat it as an axiom. Poppers criterion
2 Scientific Revolutions: From Popper to Heisenberg 45
excludes mathematics as well as philosophy from the realm of the sciences. Is this
a productive philosophical approach?
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Goethe, the great poet, indi-
cated that as a separate discipline Philosophy seemed superfluous to him. As Goethe
recollects in his autobiography: “I maintained a separate philosophy was not neces-
sary, as the whole of it was already contained in religion and poetry” (Goethe, 1998,
200). If the philosophy of science can be truly reduced to falsificationism and its
consequences, does this not then mean that all this conception is telling us about
natural science and mathematics is already contained in these disciplines?
Popper’s falsificationism seems to imply that we all have always been scientists,
since the days of the Stone Age, and that science, therefore, is a continuous and
natural affair, indistinguishable from our everyday experiences. On the other hand,
however, never before has there been such a large gulf between common and spe-
cialized knowledge as it exists today. And never before have such rapid changes in
the philosophy of science taken place.
Poppers views were frequently used as arguments against Thomas Kuhn’s con-
ception of scientific progress as it is presented in his The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. During a conference hosted by the Bedford College in 1965 (both
Kuhn and Popper attended the conference), Kuhn responded to this criticism by
pointing out that Popper’s conception cannot actually explain the evolution of sci-
entific theories. Kuhn said:
Compare the situation of the astronomer and the astrologer. If an astronomer’s prediction
failed (…), he could hope to set the situation right. Perhaps the data were fault (…). Or
perhaps theory needed adjustment, either by the manipulations of epicycles (…) or by more
fundamental reforms of astronomical technique. For more than a millennium these were the
theoretical and mathematical puzzles around which together with their instrumental coun-
terparts the astronomer’s research tradition was constituted. The astrologer, by contrast, had
no such puzzles. The occurrence of failures could be explained, but particular failures did
not give rise to research puzzles, for no man, however skilled, could make use of them in a
constructive attempt to revise the astrological tradition. There were too many possible
sources of difficulty. (Kuhn, 1970, 9)
Widespread and diverse changes were necessary in order to transform alchemy or

astrology into natural sciences. Think of the plethora of ill-founded rules, require-
ments, and recipes that accompanied the activity of the alchemist. One had to pay
attention to the purity of the soul, the position of the stars had to be considered, the
avoidance of the full moon and of the influence of black cats was necessary, and
many other things seemed essential in alchemy, especially when one wanted to
made gold from clay.
Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719), condemned by the Duke of Saxony to
make gold out of clay, could have avoided all sinful thoughts and all black cats and
still could not have made gold. Alchemy does not become scientific chemistry by
such advice as Popper provides. Popper’s strategies and maxims concern the politi-
cal application of science and its role in society, rather than science itself.
Stefan Amsterdamski responds to Popper’s problems by suggesting a functional
demarcation of the sciences, rather than a descriptive one:
It seems that one of the functions science performs permanently in human culture consists
in unifying into a coherent system practical skills and cosmological beliefs, the episteme
and the techne. It is, of course, hard to pinpoint the place and the exact moment when this
requirement was accepted for the first time. (Amsterdamski, 1975, 43)
Amsterdamski’s ideas make the situation better and worse too. According to them,
alchemy is undoubtedly a science like chemistry, in fact it appears as more science-
like, because the heyday of hermetic emblematic coincided with the decline of clas-
sical alchemy, which was still capable to merge technological skills and practical
experience with spiritual components (Roob, 2019, 18). On the other hand, it
becomes clear that the evolution of science is a cultural and socio-historical prob-
lem with unclear boundaries. But in terms of methodology, it was underdeveloped.
One of the most important concepts of Kuhn’s theory is the notion of paradigm-
change. Kuhn’s definition of the concept of paradigm is rather vague. How far can
and should the researcher go in restricting his search space, in order to identify or
replace a doubtful hypothesis?
Any non-trivial problem that we manage to identify and solve is part of a more
general unsolved problem. The problem-solving process creates its own solution-
space, and this leads to a sort of co-evolution of the problem and of the methods
used. This process essentially requires complexity reduction, which, in the end,
leads to narrowing the thinking process down to constructing, calculating, and mea-
suring, on the one hand, and making uncertain choices between alternative goals
and objects, on the other hand.
If you look into books of mathematics or theoretical natural sciences, you will
discover many equations and formulas containing symbols which denote purely
functional quantities. Quantities that serve the functional interpretation of the equa-
tions. In mathematics, the imaginary numbers, the additional constructions in
geometry provide simple examples. To put it bluntly, functionality emerges through
mathematics. Mathematics, therefore, is not a language, but rather an instrument of
reasoning.
Purely descriptive representations of natural or technical conditions are much
more difficult to understand or remain incomprehensible altogether. Bare words or
characters are replaced with new words as in a dictionary, as if one were sim-
ply explaining John means Johann. Newton’s mathematized science has often been
criticized as explaining nothing. According to legend, Newton replied: “It tells you
how the Earth moves.”
The equations and formulas of natural science do something like this too. But the
difficulty— in comparison with pure mathematics— is that the physical elements
are supposed to represent something real, something given in experiene. In physics,
for example, “constants” like the speed of light, Planck’s constant or the electric
elementary charge, etc., are such empirical constraints. Quite a number of the sym-
bols are supposed to have real counterparts in the empirical sense, but is this really
the case? The Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman is right when saying that
“nobody understands quantum mechanics” (Feynman, 1965, p. 129). Nineteenth-
century debates over such questions have led to two very different conceptions of
what logic actually is: a language or a calculus (Heijenoort, 1967).
Doesn’t an ordinary declarative sentence simply have the function, logically

speaking, of attributing a property to an object? And is it not the use of the knife that
tells us whether the wood we are carving is hard or soft, smooth or fibrous, etc.
Charles S. Peirce speaks similarly of the hardness of the diamond (see: Peirce,
CP. 7340). The basis of the operation of abstraction is that it very often starts from
one’s own actions and from constructed schemata and representations and not from
given objects, as is the case with empirical abstraction.
And the use we make of our tools makes us aware of ourselves too. The hands
must think by themselves. “The analysis of a skillful feat in terms of its constituent
motions remains always incomplete” (Polanyi, 1961, 460). During the Industrial
Revolution, the hands became substituted by working mechanisms and machinery.
A machine to spin without hands. “This was the specification of the Jacquard loom
in the patent document of John Wyatt (1700–1766) of 1735” (Essinger, 2004, 37).
Conclusion: Everywhere, from quantum theory to everyday experience and to
technical production, we learn that the actual object of our cognition is not some-
thing purely objective, but that we are always dealing with our own interactions
with reality such that the epistemic subject and the object become impossible to be
completely distinguished.
2.3 What About the Object of Cognition
At times the object of our interest appears as mere desire or motive. As pointed out
above, Böttger wanted to turn clay into gold, without, however, having any clue
whatsoever as to the practical path that might lead to this goal, ending up with por-
celain. Similarly, the finding that certain bodies increase in weight as they burn was
known as early as the seventeenth century, but it was not until the eighteenth century
that Lavoisier made this fact the subject of scientific inquiry and explanation. One
of the reasons for this delay, as argued by Thomas Kuhn, was that the “gradual
assimilation of Newton’s gravitational theory led chemists to insist that gain in
weight must mean gain in quantity of matter” (Kuhn, 1962, 71).
Theories of scientific discovery are normally of two types: those which rely on
mentalist notions (Popper) and those which employ a conception of social or cul-
tural determination (Kuhn). The analysis and clarification of the conflict between
Popper and Kuhn, therefore, begins with the insight that all thinking relates to
something that can be called the motif or intended objective of cognition, something
that, at the beginning of a process, may be fairly vague and ill defined, yet becoming
more and more effective and precise in the course of the activity. In order to be able
to think about something, one must first represent it one way or the other. The world
is therefore always conceptualized through the angle of some possible representa-
tion and design. In this respect, Max Bense noticed that “the perspective representa-
tion of the world in painting corresponds to the epistemological view of the world
in philosophy” (Bense, 1949, 79, our translation).
In art, the subject itself became an object like any other, losing its absolute posi-
tion it had detained in religion and philosophy. Architects from Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377–1446) to Girard Desargues (1591–1661) and artists like Piero del la Francesca
(1412–1492), Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), and Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
made space an object of something to which they themselves belonged.
The scientific interest that accompanied the artistic activity is inspired by the belief that the
evidence of the outward shape is also the warrant of its internal truth. The intense system-
atic study of anatomy and geometry culminating in the investigations of Leonardo da Vinci
shows clearly that the artistic naturalism of those generations did not derive from the inter-
ests and mental habits of merchants and bookkeepers, as is sometimes represented, but was
rather the expression of a general spiritual desire for order, balance, clarity and truth.
(Olschki, 1950, 295f)
However, while the painters formulated the problem of perspective as a relation

between the picture and the reality of an individual observer, Desargues (1591–1661)
formulated it as a problem of the relation between two such pictures. In this way, he
led mathematics on the path to projective geometry. In Desargues’ geometry of
“perspective”, a circle and an ellipse are considered to be the same mathematical
object, since a circle can become an ellipse when the point of view changes. The
individual perspective, which became so important for epistemology, did not exist
in the Middle Ages (Eco, 2002, Chap. 5.2). According to Olschki, during the
Renaissance, even scientific spirits were attracted “by aesthetic, rather than by
purely scientific questions.”
The same development toward an individual perspective based on personal inter-
est became also evident in scientific and technical contexts. For example, if you
want to survey something, a building plot, or maybe the territory of Denmark, then
you have to ram three stakes into the ground at suitably chosen points, which
together form a triangle. Everything else can then be located and represented in the
form of arithmetical coordinates relative to these basic points. An essential feature
of measurement is the combination between the determination of an object by indi-
vidual specification and the determination of the same object by some conceptual
means. The latter is only possible relative to objects which must be given directly.
Students learn this today under the name of analytic geometry.
Agostino Ramelli (1531–1610) was an engineer best known for writing and
illustrating a splendid book Le diverse et artificiose machine del Capitano Agostino
Ramelli (publ. 1588), which contains more than 100 extremely elaborated engrav-
ings. The book was considered “a landmark work in the depiction of the inventing
range of technological imagination” (Rothenberg, 1993, IX) and its production
must have been so expensive that an officer like Ramelli, who must have looked at
it as an important means of self-advertisement, certainly could not have financed it
by himself.
This shows that the link between artistic and scientific skill or genius (e.g.,
Leonardo da Vinci) was stronger in the days of the Renaissance than it is today.
Actually, the belief in the divine origin of beauty and the conviction that truth is embodied
in the perfection of form have been basic principles of Italian civilization ever since the
throngs of the faithful were enraptured by a Madonna of Giotto (…) not as in earlier days
because of their miraculous power but because of the supernatural charm emanating from
those beautiful human images of a perfect divine creature. (…) The general feeling that
truth and beauty are equal attributes of the divinity led those generations to contemplate the
external world with religious eyes and to express religious emotions in concrete realistic
forms. (Olschki, 1950, 251)
Leonardo da Vinci even saw the science of perspective together with mechanics as
the most important ones, the absence of which would make one look like the captain
of a ship without a compass. In his diaries he writes: “La meccanica è il paradiso
delle scienzie matematiche, perche si viene al frutto matematico” (Leonardo da
Vinci, Philosophische Tagebücher). Martin Kemp seems right when he explains that
The ambition to invent a machine or device for the perfect imitation of nature appears to
have been virtually limited to Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Western Art. (…) I do not
think it is coincidental that this was also the period in which the technologies of scientific
and utilitarian devices came to occupy a central place in European man’s striving for intel-
lectual and material progress. Indeed, the whole notion of progress in this phase of Western
thought is deeply shared by science, technology and naturalistic art. (Kemp, 1990, 167)
2.4 Some Remarks on Semiotics, Logic, and Epistemology
A photograph gives a snapshot of an object or a person. The best example of this

kind is perhaps a biometric photograph or a radiography. In a painted portrait, one
looks for something else, namely for a glimpse at the character and essence of a
living person. Anton van Dyck (1599–1641) revolutionized the genre and became
one of the greatest and most important portrait painters of all times. The people
depicted in his paintings engage the viewer in a characteristic way, entering, as it
were, in a direct communication with the viewer. Generality and movement charac-
teristic for painting are missing from the products of a data-giving apparatus,
because life demands continuity, and continuity is indefinite and open.
This kind of combination of the individual/singular and the general, which is so
crucial in aesthetics and philosophy is usually viewed as a disadvantage in technical
applications, in science or in logic. Leibniz and later Frege and Russell struggled
with the fact that any descriptive language is unable to fully determine an individual
object thus forcing us to rely on contextual indexical signs such as names or the
infamous x of algebra for clarification. As Russell points out:
I met Jones and I met a man would count traditionally as propositions of the same form, but
in actual fact they are of quite different forms: the first names an actual person, Jones; while
the second involves a propositional function, and becomes, when made explicit: The func-
tion ‘I met x and x is human’ is sometimes true. (Russell, 1919/1998, 167f)
The arts—painting as well as writing and language—present the specific as a gen-

eral as a continuum. Logic and mathematics, in contrast, depend on the principle of
logical consistency and because of this they must break this continuity of space or
time, because continuity is generality and the principle of consistency does not
apply on continuous realities. For example, when we speak of the Londoner in
general, we cannot so easily say: the Londoner is blond or funny or friendly, etc.
The Londoner can be this and that and all together. The logical principle of the
excluded middle does not apply in this case. The same situation arises when the
geometer wants to speak of the general triangle. In 1710, Berkeley had asked the
readers of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding to try and find out
whether they could possibly have
an idea that shall correspond with the description here given of the general idea of a trian-
gle, which is neither oblique, nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and
none of these at once. (Berkeley, 1975, 70)
And Peirce says in his Lectures on Pragmatism of 1903 writes:

The old definition of a general (…) recognizes that the general is essentially predicative.
(…) In another respect, however, the definition represents a very degenerate sort of general-
ity. None of the scholastic logics fails to explain that sol is a general term; because although
there happens to be but one sun yet the term sol aptum natum est dici de multis. But (…)
if sol is apt to be predicated of many, it is apt to be predicated of any multitude however
great (…) In short, the idea of a general involves the idea of possible variations which no
multitude of existent things could exhaust. (Peirce CP 5.103)
We therefore possess two forms of the general: predicative generality in language

and the continuum in space and geometry. Since they depend on the principle of
logical consistency, logic and mathematics invented a way of avoiding both.
Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781) had interpreted in his treatise Laocoon of 1766, a
famous sculpture of Hellenistic times, which can be admired in the museums of the
Vatican. Lessing describes how the artist found the “fertile moment,” in which a
whole story, that of the priest Laocoon and his sons, is summarized and compressed
in one moment in a particularly meaningful way. Normally poetry and painting,
according to Lessing, are different because they make use of entirely different
means—the first namely, of form and color in space, the second of articulated
sounds in time. Lessing writes:
Painting and poetry should be like two just and friendly neighbors, (…) Physical beauty
results from the harmonious action of various parts which can be taken in at a glance. (…)
The poet, who must necessarily detail in succession the elements of beauty, (…) must feel
that these elements arranged in a series cannot possibly produce the same effect as in juxta-
position. (…) When a poet personifies abstractions he sufficiently indicates their character
by their name and employment. These means are wanting to the artist, who must therefore
give to his personified abstractions certain symbols by which they may be recognized.
These symbols, because they are something else and mean something else, constitute them
allegorical figures. (Lessing, 1776/2005, chapter XVIII)
The most important aspect of poetical language is, in fact, the combination of meta-
phor and structuralist innovations. Nowadays, this is frequently referred to as “the
spatiality of literature.” The notion of spatial form in modern literature was intro-
duced about 1945 by Joseph Frank. Frank argues that modern aesthetic theory has
evolved not from a set of fixed norms or categories imposed on the work of art or
literature, but from the relation between the work and the conditions of human per-
ception and activity.
Frank reports that he carefully studied Lessing’s Laocoon and following Lessing,
he came to see a poem more as a spatial shape or structure than as an event in time.
Frank believed that the structure of modern works took on aspects that required
them to be apprehended spatially instead of according to the natural temporal order
of language. Smitten and Daghistany write in their presentation of Frank’s work:
The concept of spatial form in literature was introduced by Joseph Frank after having been
stimulated by the observation that modern poetry – that of Eliot and Pound, for example -
often breaks or undermines the normal consecutiveness of language forcing the reader to
perceive the elements of the poem not as unrolling in time, but as juxtaposed in space. This
undermining is accomplished primarily by the suppression of causal/temporal connectives,
those words and word groups by which a literary work is tied to external reality and to the
tradition of mimesis. This suppression of connectives alters the whole character of the liter-
ary work and forces the reader to perceive it in a new unconventional way. (Smitten and
Daghistany, 1981, 17f)
A frequently presented example of structural poetry is T H. Eliot’s great poem: “The

Waste Land,” where syntactical sequence is abandoned and replaced by a structure
depending on the perception of relationships between disconnected word groups.
Joseph Frank comments:
Aesthetic form in modern poetry, then, is based on a space-logic that demands a complete
reorientation in the reader’s attitude toward language. Since the primary reference of any
word-group is to something inside the poem itself, language in modern poetry is really
reflexive. The meaning-relationship is completed only by the simultaneous perception in
space of word-groups that have no comprehensible relation to each other when read con-
secutively in time. (Frank, 1991, 14f)
The previous examples should suffice to illustrate the thesis, that artistic expression
is characterized by the complementarity of time and space, of conceptual expression
and spatial representation as invoked by Peirce in his praise of Esthetics as the fun-
damental normative science. Can science and mathematics be reduced to consis-
tency or can we find similar aesthetic moments there as well?
2.5 Heisenberg’s Ambivalent Praise of Kuhn:

Some Implications
Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), Nobel Prize winner and one of the fathers of
Quantum Theory did not feel satisfied with Niels Bohr’s presentation of the theory
in terms of familiar macro-physical language. He therefore renounced using such
linguistic descriptions and designed a non-commutative algebraic structure that
would be better suited to directly express available physical data. In his autobiogra-
phy, Heisenberg describes how his exploratory attempts in mathematization led
him to the new foundations of quantum mechanics:
It had become clear to me what precisely had to take the place of the Bohr-Sommerfeld
quantum conditions in an atomic physics working with none but observable magnitudes.
(…) Then I noticed that there was no guarantee that the new mathematical scheme could be
put into operation without contradictions. In particular, it was completely uncertain whether
the principle of the conservation of energy would still apply, and I knew only too well that
my scheme stood or fell by that principle. (…) Other than that, however, several calcula-
tions showed that the scheme seemed quite self-consistent. Hence I concentrated on dem-
onstrating that the conservation law held (…). (Heisenberg, 1971, 61)
Many years after Heisenberg’s great contributions to quantum mechanics, Carl von
Weizsäcker (1912–2007) physicist, philosopher, and Heisenberg’s student recalls
having once drawn Heisenberg’s attention to Kuhn’s picture of the history of sci-
ence as a succession of paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions. Contrary to
Weizsäcker’s expectations, Heisenberg was disappointed by Kuhn’s book:
Historically he’s right. But he spoils the punch line. What he calls paradigms are actually
closed theories. They must follow each other discontinuously because they are simple. The
real philosophical problem is why can there be simple theories that are true? (...) That is the
key to the history of science. One has not understood anything about the possibility of sci-
ence as long as one has not understood it. (Weizsäcker, 1992, 799)
Heisenberg rejects Kuhn’s conception of scientific revolutions, even though he

admits that Kuhn is moving in the right direction, because Kuhn does not go far
enough. What is then the true merit of Kuhn’s conception?
We will deal with this issue below. In the meantime, it seems worthwhile taking
a brief look at another example taken from physics and at the problem of the exis-
tence of paradigms in mathematics.
The example we have in mind is provided by the history of classical Newtonian
mechanics and its generalization by Einstein. Thomas Kuhn indicates that the term
Mass has different meanings in classical Newtonian Mechanics and in Einstein’s
Special Theory of Relativity: the Newtonian mass is stable, independent of velocity,
whereas the Einsteinian one depends on the velocity:

1/ 2
m m0 / 1-v 2 / c 2
When we assume that the velocity of light c passes to infinity, we get m = m0 and we
see a continuity between the old and the new theory. However, this passing to infin-
ity is explicitly forbidden, because the constancy of the velocity of light is essential
to Einstein’s theory of relativity. The Michelson–Morley experiment showed that
the velocity of light is constant and independent of the relative position and move-
ment of the source.
In the theory only the concept, that is, the sense or meaning appears, while in
experiment and technology, the references to the corresponding objects are estab-
lished. When we consider successive formal structures, then the continuity and cor-
respondence is clear. The situation changes when we pass from the syntactical
approach to semantics. Semiotically speaking, it is the complementarity between
sense and reference that counts and makes the real difference. Nobel Prize winner,
Richard Feynman, compares the different formulations of classical mechanics as
given by Newton, Lagrange, and Hamilton, respectively, showing this fact implicitly:
Mathematically each of the three different formulations, Newton’s law, the local field
method and the minimum principle, gives exactly the same consequences. What do we do
then? You will read in all the books that we cannot decide scientifically on one or the other.
That is true. (...) But psychologically they are different because they are completely
unequivalent when you are trying to guess new laws. As long as physics is incomplete, and
we are trying to understand the other laws, then the different possible formulations may
give clues about what might happen in other circumstances. (Feynman, 1965, 53)
For a further clarification, it seems helpful to briefly explore the applicability of

these reflections to a formal science like mathematics and to ask whether there can
be revolutions in mathematics. In the past, this issue has indeed been the subject to
heated debates. Michael Crowe, for instance, maintained that “revolutions never
occur in mathematics” (Crowe, 1975, 165), because in mathematics, the develop-
ment of new theories does not lead to older theories being irrevocably discarded. In
contrast, Caroline Dunmore argued that revolutions do occur in mathematics,
(…) but are confined entirely to the meta-level component of the mathematical world. (...)
Consider what a major revolution in thought was entailed in the acceptance of non-
Euclidean geometry. (…) Although Euclidean geometry itself was retained the belief that it
was the only kind of geometry there could possibly be was discarded (…). The evolution of
mathematics is conservative on the object-level, but revolutionary on the meta-level.
(Dunmore, 1992, 212)
However, this position is not entirely accurate either, because first of all, mathemat-
ics and meta-mathematics became indistinguishable insofar as axioms in the sense
of Grassmann, Peano or Hilbert are meta-mathematical systems and not systems of
immediate mathematical truths. Until about 1800, the terms axiom and hypothesis
were opposites, after which they became synonyms.
Moreover, revolutions in the meta-mathematical domain also result in revolu-
tions in the object domain. Quite simply because everything that satisfies the axioms
of a formal mathematical theory must be included in its object domain. For exam-
ple, Peano’s axioms do not answer questions, like: “What is the number 1, or 2”?
Numbers could be anything, like Conway- Numbers, Vectors, or Hackenbusch-
Games. This formal generality enlarges the usefulness of the mathematical number
concept, rather than restricting it. A theory becomes a pair consisting of a formal
axiomatical structure and some intended applications or models.
Let us present an argument linked to the problem of determining the angle-sum
theorem for triangles as an illustration. Suppose we pass along the periphery of a
triangle. By how many degrees have we turned after having reached our starting
position again? Simple answer: 360°, because our input direction coincides with the
end position. This response, although intuitively convincing, is based on the assump-
tion that it amounts to the very same thing, to turn around on the spot to a full angle
of 360°, on the one hand, or alternatively, do the same thing by travelling along a
closed line, the periphery of an arbitrarily large triangle, for example, on the
other hand.
One case, however, is based on local characteristics of space, the other is not, at
least not if the triangle may be assumed as arbitrarily large! For arbitrary triangles,
our conclusion is only valid in the Euclidean plane, but is invalid on the surface of
the sphere, for example. Spherical geometry, like the geometries of Lobatchevsky
and of Riemann are generalizations of Euclidean geometry. The latter is a limit case
of them when the curvature radius K goes to infinity. Non-Euclidean geometries
became accepted only after Beltrami had proved their consistency in 1868. The
ordinary sphere was adopted as a model of a space with positive curvature.
Descartes invented co-ordinate geometry by assigning number pairs to the points
of plane Euclidean geometry, thus presenting a certain meta-perspective on classical
geometry. Axiomatic linear algebra provides a meta-perspective on Cartesian clas-
sical analytical geometry.
The strength of algebra and of formal axiomatics lies in the possibility of turning
even unknown objects - objects the existence of which is not guaranteed in
advance - into objects of investigation and of mathematical operation. And this
becomes an important moment in the series of events that led to the emergence of
mathematics as a linguistic tool of the new sciences. Lavoisier, the Newton of chem-
istry, writes at the beginning of his Traité Elémentaire de Chimie:
While engaged in this employment, I perceived, better than I had ever done before, the
justice of the following maxims of the Abbé de Condillac, in his System of Logic, and some
other of his works: “Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression,
in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and
an analytical method.” (Lavoisier, 1952, 1)
Therefore, if we understand algebra as a meta-theory of chemistry, then we only

need to know whether two things of our interest are the same or are different from
the given perspective. The similarities and differences refer only to what can be
expressed mathematically, length, width, weight, temperature, etc. Lavoisier
continues:
Thus, while I thought myself employed only in forming a nomenclature and while I pro-
posed myself nothing more than to improve the chemical language, my work transformed
itself by degrees (...) into a treatise upon the elements of chemistry. (Lavoisier, 1952, 1)
And this becomes an important moment in the series of events that led to the emer-
gence of mathematics as a tool of the new sciences. The reference to the physical
weight, the consideration of which Lavoisier led to his theory of combustion, points
to a general characteristic of research. We usually do not know what is behind the
things; we do not know their genus from the outset, nor their specificities, or their
essence. But we have to be able to see whether two structures or two objects are the
same or are different. Lavoisier writes:
I have been obliged to depart from the usual order of courses (…) which always assume the
first principles of science as known and begin by treating the elements of matter and by
explaining the tables of affinities without considering that in so doing they must bring the
principal phenomena of chemistry into view at the very outset: they make use of terms
which have not been defined and suppose the science to be understood at the beginning.
(Lavoisier, 1952, 2)
It’s not just about the new mathematical perspective, but about establishing a whole
new experimental practice that makes Nature appear in a new light:
When in the early 1780s Lavoisier and Laplace invented the device that they called a
machine for measuring heat, but that soon became the calorimeter, they designed it as an
analogue of that epitome of simple machines, the balance. (…) Despite their collaboration,
however, Lavoisier and Laplace recognized somewhat different balances in the calorimeter.
With his primary interest in chemistry, Lavoisier saw a balance of chemical substances. (…)
Laplace saw a balance of forces. (…) The calorimeter mediated between theories and
things. It exchanges theoretical entities for concrete realities. (Wise, 2010, 208ff)
2.6 Aesthetics and Scientific Theory Building: Heisenberg

and Kepler
In addition to the objective generality, something like an individual generality of an

aesthetic nature appears in modern thinking. Werner Heisenberg, for example,
believed—like Kepler—that mathematical beauty has a grasp on truth: “If nature
leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty, we cannot help think-
ing that they are ‘true,’ that they reveal a genuine feature of nature.”
In retrospect, he traces this conviction back to his school time where atoms were
displayed with “hooks and eyes.” This irritated the young Heisenberg, since atoms
of such complexity could never be basic building blocks of matter. At this point,
Heisenberg followed Plato believing that “the ultimate root of appearances is there-
fore not matter but mathematical law, symmetry, mathematical form.” (Heisenberg,
1974, p. 10) This conviction accompanied him throughout his entire life.
On occasion of one of Niels Bohr’s visits at Göttingen, Heisenberg had asked
him whether he was indeed convinced the classical concepts were sufficient for
dealing with quantum physics. Bohr had replied, as Heisenberg remembered, that
classical concepts were adequate also in the sub-atomic domain of Rutherford’s
model of the atom. Heisenberg rejected this. As an alternative, Heisenberg con-
structed, as said, a non-commutative algebraic structure better suited to match the
available physical data and certain theoretical principles. Thereby, he made use of a
new mathematical calculus, namely matrix algebra, something Paul Jordan had
pointed out to him (de Toledo Piza, 2003, p. 90ff).
In his autobiography, Heisenberg describes how his exploratory attempts in
mathematization provided him access to the foundations of quantum mechanics:
I noticed that there was no guarantee that the new mathematical scheme could be put into
operation without contradictions. In particular, it was completely uncertain whether the
principle of the conservation of energy would still apply, and I knew only too well that my
scheme stood or fell by that principle. (Heisenberg, 1971, 61)
As soon as he had success in showing that his framework of matrix algebra would
confirm the energy theorem in all parts, he wrote that
[I] could no longer doubt the mathematical consistency and coherence of the kind of quan-
tum mechanics to which my calculations pointed. (…) [And I] felt almost giddy at the
thought that I now had to probe this wealth of mathematical structures nature had so gener-
ously spread out before me. (ibid.)
Heisenberg’s work shows that theories are realities sui generis in distanced relation
to concrete reality. Theories and works of art are both build on aesthetic integration.
Sabine Hossenfelder commenting on the (aesthetic) disagreements between
Heisenberg and Schrödinger writes: “The advent of quantum mechanics wasn’t the
only beauty fail in physics” (Hossenfelder, 2018, p. 20). Hossenfelder examines the
mathematical representation of the system of planetary orbits given by Johannes
Kepler (1571—1630) in terms of the relations between the Platonic solids and
shows how this led to an example “aesthetically motivated failure.” Of course, one
can simply say, with Hossenfelder, that Kepler’s model was wrong (Hossenfelder,
2018, 18). And in fact, Kepler later convinced himself that his first model did not
apply, and he concluded that the planets move in ellipses, not circles, around the Sun.
However, it seems of some importance to understand that the intention to search
for the exact form of the planetary orbits, i.e. the search for general laws, and not
being content with any more or less plausible interpolation of the measurement
data, was stimulated and guided by aesthetic desire and aesthetic imagination in the
first place. The measurement data alone never determine the natural laws of which
they are supposed to be the expression of. John Banville has written a very interest-
ing and ingenious novel about Kepler. Banville explains that after thorough investi-
gations, Kepler finally
(…) made the discovery. He realized that it was not so much in what he had done that
Copernicus had erred: his sin had been one of omission. The great man, Kepler now under-
stood, had been concerned only to see the nature of things demonstrated, not explained.
(…) Copernicus had devised a better system which yet (...) was intended only to save the
phenomena, to set up a model which need not be empirically true, but only plausible
according to the observations. (Banville, 1981, 25)
Astronomers like Copernicus and Kepler could not undertake laboratory experi-
ments and had experimented with theories instead. They had to imagine different
models that did not come into conflict with available data in order “to save the phe-
nomena.” From mere formal hypotheses, no true and at the same time necessary
conclusions can be obtained, an insight that was the key source of inspiration for
Kant’s epistemology, even if Kant’s explanation turned out to be too rigid. The
hypotheses themselves must be experienced as true.
Kepler’s decision to view the heliocentric system as a fact of physics rather than
just as a convenient instrument for calculations and predictions led to strong opposi-
tion not just from the Catholics Church but also by the Protestant movement. The
link between aesthetic and scientific ideas in Kepler’s work is concentrated in the
concept of “harmony”:
Firsts and centrally, he means he has reached a new conception of causality, that is, he
thinks of the underlying mathematical harmony discoverable in the observed facts as the
cause of the latter, the reason, as he usually puts it, why they are as they are (…) He was
antecedently convinced that genuine causes must always be in the nature of underlying
mathematical harmonies. (…) Causality, to repeat, becomes reinterpreted in terms of math-
ematical simplicity and harmony (…) A true hypothesis for Kepler must be a statement in
the mathematical harmony discoverable in the effects. (Burtt, 2003, 64f)
In the light of the things outlined above, the fallibility of a theory, therefore, appears
not simply as a matter of falsifying one set of assertions of the theory or the other
but rather as a fundamentally determined, among other things, by the esthetic
choices made while the theories were developed. In our view, an aesthetic choice of
this kind is not simply a lucky but arbitrary decision on the part of the creator of a
theory, but rather one that emerges during the process of making sense of available
data and puzzles. This leaves no room for nominalist language-games, and is – that,
at least, is our interpretation of Heisenberg’s criticism of Kuhn-, something that
occurs objectively. This, of course, as said, does not exclude failure, but it allows a
different understanding of what the falsification of a theory requires.
Galileo Galilei seems to never have adopted Kepler’s discovery of the elliptical
orbits of the planets. He considered the whole matter from a strictly technical point
of view and always looked at it from the perspective of classic geometric ideas and
processes (yet another aesthetic decision!). In his extensive biography of Galileo,
J. Heilbron writes, among other things: “Nowhere in his later work is there any
acknowledgment that Kepler motion in an ellipse is a substantial technical improve-
ment over equant motion in an eccentric circle” (Heilbron, 2010, 72).
Cardinal Bellarmino (1542–1621), Grand Inquisitor and Galileo’s principal
adversary, in 1615 notified Galileo of a forthcoming decree of the Church, con-
demning the Copernican doctrine of heliocentrism and ordered him to abandon it as
an explanation of the world. He argued that mathematicians always used to speak
hypothetically or “ex suppositione” only (Bellarmino, Letter to Father Foscarini of
April 1615). Galileo agreed and disagreed.
In his “Assayer” (Il Saggiatore) of 1623, Galileo compared God’s Word in the
Bible, which is adapted to the frame and imagination of the people, on the one hand,
and the Great Book of Nature, on the other hand, which presents the realities of
Nature in geometrical figures. But it seems unclear, whether he simply wanted to
say that the Book of Nature cannot be read by everybody or whether he wanted to
contradict the Bible. Galileo, to his credit, also rejected the idea that mathematicians
might employ convenient hypotheses, because of technical reasons alone. However,
when three comets appeared in the sky in 1618, Galileo held on (for technical and
aesthetic reasons of his own) to the traditional thesis of the circularity of the orbits
of the stars, ignoring Kepler’s “bold break with this tradition” to classify the appear-
ance of the comets “as atmospheric phenomena in the sense of the ancient Meteora”
(Blumenberg, 1981, 73, our translation).
2.7 Aesthetic Desire and Experience
We may and indeed must emphasize the importance of the creative and artists of the
Renaissance because their contributions contained the germs of the Scientific
Revolution of the modern age.
An aesthetic experience is something extremely personal, something difficult to
share with others. You cannot make somebody to see or feel something that he/she
does not see. It is only indirectly manifest in the products of art and science, just as
the laws of nature are only, as said before, indirectly given in the morphology and
functions of a mechanical machine. Aesthetic experience is something that we
would like to call the individual general. It is a union between general assumptions,
material marks, and emotions concentrated in one individual artwork. The work of
art, therefore, represents a reality sui generis (linked to the aesthetic activity that
shaped it) and at the same time it is a sign that reaches further sometimes enabling
the emergence of further new and unexpected reactions and developments.
Theory is not reality, the map is not the territory, the menu is not a substitute for
the meal, and a drawing of the dead Marat in the bathtub consists of nothing but a
few lines of graphite on white paper, impressive as it may be. When we approach a
theory or a drawing, we can engage in two types of effort comprehending it. One
may proceed from the whole toward the identification of its parts, or, conversely,
from the recognition of a group of presumed parts toward grasping their mutual
relations in the whole.
And we can further understand a piece of science or of the arts as representative
for the whole of a certain culture at a certain time in history. Johan Huizinga writes
at the beginning of his Preface to his monumental The Waning of the Middle-Ages:
The present work deals with the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries regarded as
a period of termination, as the close of the Middle Ages. Such a view of them presented
itself to the author of this volume, whilst endeavoring to arrive at a genuine understanding
of the art of the brothers Van Eyck and their contemporaries, that is to say, to grasp its mean-
ing by seeing it in connection with the entire life of their times (Huizinga, 1999).
Other philosophers and historians have argued in a similar way. Think of Ernst
Cassirer or Agnes Heller. Cassirer, for example, wrote that the individual
(…) is form only by giving himself his form, and therefore we must not see in this form
merely a limit, but we must recognize it as a genuine and original force. The general that
reveals itself to us in the sphere of culture, in language, in art, in religion, in philosophy is
therefore always individual and universal at the same time. (quoted from Schwemmer,
1997, 145)
And in Agnes Heller’s book, Der Mensch der Renaissance (Renaissance Man), we
find the following passage:
It’s a popular truism to say that in the Renaissance Man became the center of interest. (…)
But this is not the problem, the question rather is, how to interpret the relationship between
Man (society) and Nature. (…) Nature appears as an object governed by its own laws (…).
And the knowledge of Nature becomes a continuous task of the human mind. Spirit and
continuity are equally important here. Spirit means that success in no way depends on ethi-
cal behavior, while continuity separates knowledge from logic. (Heller, 1988, 18f.)
As we have seen, foundation and development of knowledge can only be discussed

in relation to one another. Which of the three normative sciences named by Peircean
and mentioned in the beginning of this paper are better suited for giving a more
adequate account of this evolutionary interdependence, is it Aesthetics, is it Ethics,
or is it Logic? Since Heller excludes Ethics and Logic regarding the Renaissance
and the Scientific Revolution, we are left with Aesthetics as the only remaining guid-
ing thread. This was new!
Traditionally, from Plato and through the Middle Ages, some principle of suffi-
cient reason, occasionally rooted in the belief in God’s wisdom, dominated most
attempts to explain the world and the human destination within that world. At times,
even Descartes appears to endorse the principle of sufficient reason. For example,
he argues for the existence of God in the third Meditation on the basis of the prin-
ciple that there must be at least as much reality in the cause as in the effect.
Car d’où est-se que l’effet peut tirer sa réalité sinon de sa cause? Et de là il suit, non seule-
ment que le néant ne saurait produire aucune chose, mais aussi que ce qui est plus parfait,
c’est-à-dire que contient en soi plus réalité, ne peut être une suite et une dépendance du
moins parfait. (Descartes, 1953, 289)
And he justifies this causal principle by claiming that “Nothing comes from
nothing.”
Most important, however, remain, as said, principles of aesthetic integration and
individual or exemplary generality. The emergence of individualism has for the first
time in history led to a theory of excellence and of human genius. No such theory
was available before the Renaissance. During the Renaissance, this theory of genial-
ity was linked to the ideal of universal accessibility of art and not simply, as in the
case of Bacon and Galileo, with science as such. In this sense, therefore, art involved
early on an element of democratic creative education (compare Heller, 423ff). In
science and in mathematics education, the opposition between conceptual consis-
tency and continuous experience still pose a serious challenge to educational efforts
to this day.
Although reflections on art and beauty have, of course existed since Plato, it is
only since about the middle of the eighteenth century in Europe that a distinct dis-
cipline called “aesthetics” develops as a consequence of what had occurred earlier.
Nevertheless, the artist is the paradigmatic personality of the Renaissance. The imagination
of the genius is the actual creation of this great epoch, even the man of action has an aes-
thetic character in it. But behind the concept of the artist hides that of the creative person in
general. From now on this concept plays a previously unknown role in the intellectual life
of the West. (Baeumler, 1923, 2)
And curiously enough, the situation repeated itself during the Romantic Movement,
in the last decades of the 18th and the first decades of the 19th century, particularly
in the context of the more abstract empirical sciences of electricity and thermody-
namics and at the same time in the Humboldtian conception of unity of research and
teaching in Germany. As S. Turner describes the situation:
In Germany, unlike other European nations, the universities have traditionally been the
major centers for the creation of academic knowledge as well as for its transmission. This
was especially true in the first two thirds of the nineteenth century (…). The ultimate cause
of this burgeoning of German scholarship was the new and at that point uniquely German
conviction that the professor’s responsibility is not only to transmit academic learning but
also to expand it, through criticism and research. This ideal of the professor’s proper func-
tion can be called the research imperative. (Turner, 1981, 109ff)
The role of the aesthetic and the importance of the arts lies in the fact that art can
deal more freely with the fundamental complementarity of meaning and information.
2.8 Conclusions
In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had said: “Philosophical cognition regards the
particular in the general, mathematical the general in the particular, nay, in the
individual” (Kant, B742). For Kant, this meant that in mathematics the general
becames, so to speak, alive in the particular construction.
The latter is also true with respect to the arts. Mathematics has always had some
affinity with the arts. And we find, in fact, that it was aesthetics—in addition to
technical utility—that had stimulated the mathematization of the sciences. Pure
mathematics had always had an aesthetic appeal to people, and it was sometimes
even regarded as the highest philosophy. A mathematician, says G. Hardy, the most
important British mathematician up to the Second World War
is like a painter or a poet a maker of patterns (...). The mathematician’s patterns like the
painters of the poets must be beautiful, the ideas like the colors or the words must fit
together in a harmonious way. There is no place in the world for ugly mathematics. (Hardy,
2012, 84)
Analytic mathematical thinking, such as traditional twentieth-century analytic phi-

losophy, is stuck in a computer-induced impasse which may perhaps grow even
deeper, than it is today. In teaching contexts algorithmic reductionism presents itself
as a convenient simplification. The procedures we teach in our schools are sim-
ple and, if not, they can be easily performed by technical devices such as calculators
and computers. If practiced unilaterally—as this is often the case, due not least to
the social systemic constraints upon the educational process —this approach loses
sight of the aesthetic component of mathematical and indeed scientific practice.
Analytic mathematics, if it is to work for the student, must be experienced, and
a “technical” approach is only one side of the equation. Structures must be contem-
plated in action and experienced, they cannot be directly communicated. This, on
the other hand, cannot be achieved by simply delegating the task to supposedly
familiar semantic environments either.
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Chapter 3
Questions That Are at the Core
of a Mathematics Education “Project”
3.1 Introduction
It is assumed that mathematics, as a science and the way it exists, is at the core of
the issues concerning mathematics education, as well as those concerning the for-
mation of individuals and citizens. This core is surrounded and expanded by issues
concerning the complexity of the world in which we live and requires that socio-
historical-cultural contexts be considered. From this core and its surroundings, arise
diverse themes of research centered on lines of investigation and in sub-areas of
mathematics education. To elucidate this statement, I list the following works which
focus on many of such themes. One that has achieved prominence in recent years is
coloniality, about which many articles have been written, mainly in Brazil. The
objective of such works is to highlight the supremacy of knowledge brought about
by Western mathematics, which has been imposed as a parameter of truth and accu-
racy for the knowledge produced in other cultures. Fernandes (2021) exposes
thoughts about relations between Mathematics and Western modernity in the con-
figuration of the colonial matrix of power. Tamayo (2017), Tuchapesk da Silva, and
Project is being understood as “projection,” as Heidegger exposes its meaning in Being and Time
(1962, p. 185), that is, as an idea launched to the possibilities of happening, that is, of its becoming.
He says “Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being” which we call “projecting.” Projecting has noth-
ing to do with comporting oneself toward a plan that was conceived and in accordance with which
Dasein arranges its Being (Heidegger, 1962, p. 185). The objective of bringing this meaning to
mathematics education, as set out in the title of this chapter, is to affirm that at the core of mathe-
matics education there are issues considered important that are actualized in the very movement of
becoming in which mathematics education is cast into the mundanity of the world actualizing its
possibilities.
M. A. V. Bicudo (*)
São Paulo State University (Unesp), São Paulo, Brazil

64 M. A. V. Bicudo
Tamayo (2022) have authored work highlighting this idea. Ethnomathematics has
been seen as a precursor of studies focused on sociocultural issues within mathe-
matics education. Tamayo et al. (2018) stated that ethnomathematics studies in
mathematics education
[...] triggered “a shift in the ways of thinking about mathematical knowledge. As a result of
such movements, initiated by ethnomathematics, which we understand as counter- conduct,
new branches, and possibilities, for thinking about mathematics education through different
perspectives blossomed.” (Tamayo et al., 2018, p. 588)
By assuming social justice as a germane value in educational practice, critical

mathematics has also highlighted the mathematics affected within the context of
daily practices. Gutestein (2018) explained this view clearly by stating
While I acknowledge the multiple meanings of these terms, for me, they all mean the same:
to learn and use mathematics to study social reality, as a way to deepen learners’ under-
standing of the roots of injustice and prepare them to change the world, as they see fit, in
both the present and future. (Gutestein, 2018, p. 133)
Another theme that has been brought to the foreground is that of gender and
mathematics education. For instance, Souza and Fonseca, assume in their article that
[...] the emergence of the concept of gender in education showing different nuances and
proposing its incorporation as a category of analysis in the field of mathematics education,
in which discussions on gender are rarely detected, especially when we analyze scientific
research in Brazil. Using women scholars in the field of gender studies as references, we
have reflected on the need to incorporate this concept into the investigation of the processes
of teaching and learning mathematics, the subjects in pedagogical relations, and the cultural
mode of conceiving, using, and evaluating mathematical knowledge. Such incorporation
would imply, however, a disruption in the ways which we have thought about concepts
related to female, male and mathematics.” (Souza & Fonseca, 2009, p. 29)
This questioning regarding mathematics and reality leads some researchers to

investigate “The Separation of Mathematics from Reality in Scientific and
Educational Discourse” (Schürmann, 2018). The article aimed to illustrate that the
separation between mathematics and reality is an outcome of several shifts in his-
toric mathematical discourse.
This is a broad spectrum of issues. How can this diversity be articulated? How
can we articulate relevant criticisms of the primacy of European science,1 prevalent
in Western civilization, in relation to the ways other cultures tackle knowledge and
the understanding of mathematics, which underpins scientific and technological
1
“European sciences” is a term that refers to the logic of science that was built in Western civiliza-
tion and that expanded throughout the world, as a support for scientific investigations and their
applications and as a tool for technology. “The term ‘science’ was used here in a precise sense: that
which refers to the disciplines, theories, investigations that were configured in western thought in
two fundamental stages: Greek speculation for Geometry and modern speculation for Mathematics
and Physics” (Ales Bello, 1986, p.10) (Il termine “scienza” stato usato in una precisa accezione:
quella che si referisce alle discipline, teorie indagine che sono configurate nel pensiero occidentale
nelle due tappe fondamentalle: le speculzione greca per la geometria e la speculazione moderna
per la mathematica e física).
3 Questions That Are at the Core of a Mathematics Education “Project” 65
practices, which have become common both in Western and Easter cultures?
Notably, there is a certain ambiguity in the way mathematics is treated, according to
the discourse and the emphasis attributed either to the ways of routinely dealing
with it, or the scope and positivity of scientific knowledge, present in the areas of
health, engineering, technology. Depending on the perspective, the so-called
European science is viewed as important and crucial for progress and the possibility
of improving life and, at the same time, it is rejected, for bringing too many gener-
alizations which are imposed on particular worldviews, especially those of different
cultures. How can we account for such distinct perspectives, when working with
mathematics education in institutions dedicated to the formation of individuals and
citizens?
Kennedy (2018) had already shown concern regarding the need to create space in
the curriculum for the inclusion of philosophical thought within mathematics edu-
cation. In “Towards a Wider Perspective: Opening a Philosophical Space in the
Mathematics Curriculum” she stated that
philosophical inquiry may aid in the opening of a “wider horizon of interpretations” that
includes a critical dimension. Such an opening represents a potential expansion of students’
mathematical experience, and promises to provide bridges for establishing richer, critical,
and more meaningful connections and interactions between students’ personal experience
and the broader culture. (Kennedy, 2018, p. 309)
I agree with Kennedy that it is necessary to bring philosophical thought to the

mathematics education curriculum. To point to possibilities I chose to write this
chapter, as an essay, albeit short.
The objective of this chapter is not to produce a list of themes defined as impor-
tant and worthy of study and practice. Rather, it is to conduct an analytical and
reflexive exercise and point out understandings regarding the characteristics of sci-
entific work, which is supported by mathematics, defending the premise that within
the scope of mathematics education it is necessary to comprehend such characteris-
tics and integrate them into educational practices.
Husserl (1970a, b, c, 2006) conducted an important study regarding the crisis
engulfing the European community in the 1920s and 1930s. He emphasized the role
Western science plays in that crisis when it makes absolute and imposes its way of
dogmatizing the world and its reality, even covering ethical issues. While seeking to
understand the manner through which this science was produced, he presented an
enlightening study of pre-categorial and categorial knowledge. They lie at the base
of Euclidian geometry, which, in turn, laid out the manner mathematics is used,
assumed by Galileo’s physics, as well as the ramifications of the advancement of
science and its application to natural and spiritual sciences, due to the success of
their application and research. He emphasized the logic of such production, which
encompasses the work with idealities of mathematical objects, with the exactness
based on such idealities and, as a result, points to the mathematization of nature.
The strength of his thinking brings possibilities for conducting an analytical-
reflective exercise, bringing his considerations to mathematics education. Significant
work has been conducted to highlight the articulations of ideas with mathematics
66 M. A. V. Bicudo
education, explained, and understood by that philosopher. Bicudo (1991, 2018,

2020), Garnica (1992), Hausberger and Patras (2019), Hausberberger (2020), Rosa
and Pinheiro (2020), Paulo and Ferreira (2020), Batistela (2017), Kluth (2005) are
some of the many authors who have committed to studying that philosopher’s work
and who, through exhaustive hermeneutic reading of his texts, opened themselves to
the understanding of what he expressed. While reflecting their comprehension,
prominent issues in the field of mathematics education are intertwined with their
thoughts. They endeavor to highlighting possible articulations both in the scope of
the philosophy of mathematics education, as well as in the practices which foster
teaching and learning. Bicudo and Rosa, for instance, sought out to understand the
Lebenswelt in which we are immersed nowadays, in which science and computer
technology are present, constituting cybernetic space. They asked: How does one
get around to teaching and learning mathematics within this reality? Hausberger
and Patras (2019) dedicated their efforts to understanding the notions of horizon, the
ways by which hermeneutic studies of texts are conducted, including in mathemat-
ics, articulating their understandings with the didactics of mathematics. Bicudo
(1991) authored a text on different ways of understanding hermeneutics and advo-
cated the importance of bringing it into the didactic-pedagogical activities con-
ducted by mathematics teachers. Garnica (1992) also dedicated himself to studying
hermeneutics, investigating how mathematics texts could be hermeneutically read
during an activity conducted by teachers with students, describing the meanings that
words opened in the readers’ horizon of interpretation. Kluth (2005) investigated
the algebraic structure, focusing on the way through which its logical-mathematical
determinations and language are presented throughout the historicity of the formal-
izations effected within the discipline. Batistela (2017) endeavored to study and
understand Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, advancing into the field of mathemat-
ics teaching within mathematics teachers’ education courses. Since the 1990s, Paulo
has studied topics relevant to comprehension and perception, articulating them to
the understanding of the ways through which children and also university students
constitute and develop knowledge of geometry.
This chapter focused on the studies of Husserl about the specificities of mathe-
matics, Sciences of Nature, and Sciences of Spirit,2 and technology. While high-
lighting them, this author wonders what horizons of philosophical, thus critical and
reflexive thought, are opened regarding their importance, and what they say about
the world, despite understanding that they do not dictate, or are not the guardians of
the truth, much less establish the parameters that should guide human knowledge
and the ethics of personal and social interrelations.
In this chapter, the goal is to make these ideas explicit. Therefore, the meaning of
the mathematization of nature, the way to achieve accuracy at the level of categorial
thinking, the way through which mathematical objects become idealities, enabling
2
Sciences of Spirit are sometimes called cultural, humanistic, or moral and political (Mora, 2000,
p. 465). They are also generally treated as Humanities. When understood as Humanities, in the
Western world, in the modern era, in the present, they can be investigated through the logic of
modern science, as developed since Galileo.
advances in the field of mathematics and other sciences that stream toward the lib-
erty of procedures, free from the empirical experience performed in the concrete-
ness of the natural world.
It is assumed that Mathematics education deals with mathematics, thus with the
logic underlying it. But also deals with issues concerning human sciences. It pro-
motes critical thinking about society and ideological-political issues that populate
everyday life. It is complex work that requires a vision that encompasses both the
logic of the production of mathematics itself and its presence in other sciences and
technology, as philosophical thinking, thus critical and reflective, regarding the
same sciences and how they+ came to prevail, dictating “truths” about the reality of
the world. This work must be the goal of mathematics education when mathemati-
cally educating citizens and forming individuals.
The abovementioned goal of mathematics education is a broad endeavor to be
thought about and assumed by those who care about educating mathematically and
who seek to accomplish that. This text focuses on a mode of understanding the pro-
duction of mathematical idealities and the mathematization of sciences—natural
and human—that entail the imposition of a scientific truth above the reality experi-
enced by people in their daily lives. This imposition creates obstacles to the under-
standing of the articulation between scientific theory and reality, as well as opens
paths for separate cultures, groups, and worldviews.
Due to the importance of Edmund Husserl’s work, the rigor present in his inves-
tigations and the pertinence of the themes he dealt with, which are still current
today, this text presents the manner through which he understands the production of
mathematics, sciences of nature and sciences of spirit, and his view on the imposi-
tion of “scientific truth” as dominating in relation to other possibilities for human
beings to explore and understand the world. At the same time, articulated consider-
ations are presented based on the enlightening arguments regarding mathematics
education. To do that, the following are addressed: the production of mathematics,
highlighting the logic present in pre-categorial knowledge; the change of target that
takes place in the production of geometric knowledge; the extent of this way of
knowing which is established as structuring of scientific knowledge in the Modern
Age, to the present day with Galileo, underlying the positivist view of science. The
treatment of such themes is articulated by contemplating mathematics education:
the necessary critical-reflexive view.
3.2 The Production of Mathematics
This production results from a historical-cultural movement established and which

endures in the very manner through which human beings cope with the world3 in
their daily dealings. However, it is not a mere representation of what is seen,
3
World is used here in its original meaning.
68 M. A. V. Bicudo
understood, and performed in those dealings. Nonetheless, in the process of its con-
stitution, there is a change in the view of the objects given in their physical concrete-
ness and space-time position and dealing with them under a perspective that is
different from that which prevails in the natural world. Focusing on this change and
seeking to understand the threads that are intertwined in it is an arduous task that has
been the objective of many scholars, from different areas, for centuries. To this end,
a selection is made in order to look at what has been accepted as being the cradle of
science in Western civilization, ancient Greek culture. I will take the work of
Edmund Husserl, specially The Crisis of European Sciences (1970a),4 to elucidate
that movement.
In that work, Husserl produced an interpretative study about the movement that,
according to his understanding, structures the transformation of pre-categorial
knowledge, present in day-today life in the world, into scientific knowledge, which
he calls categorial. Pre-categorial knowledge is produced in the world of common
experience which we navigate in space-time, making predictions and acting accord-
ing to expectations based on them. Categorial is knowledge which is already based
on the theoretic view of reality. It is law-oriented knowledge. According to Ales
Bello (1986), those laws can be understood in the 1927 lectures, when Husserl won-
ders about the Gesetzeswissenschaft law. According to such law, he reports as
follows:
(a) the law that applies to the world surrounding us, according to which the world is homo-
geneous; it represents the generality of all that is “regulated”; therefore, we are talking
about a regulated “event”, of a regulated “becoming”, of a regulated “causality”;
(b) the “exact” laws that contrast with the first regularity that can be defined as purely
“typical”. Opposition is justified as accuracy, which consists of presuming the identity of
singularity in a priori sciences, and can assume two meanings, depending on whether iden-
tity is understood as “ideally-exact” or as “typical” (this is the difference between mathe-
matization and generalization) (Ales Bello, 1986, p. 152).5
4
It is important to state that the crisis of contemporary European sciences is a theme that had
already concerned Husserl. In 1922, he addressed this theme in an article for Kaizo Magazine
(Husserl, 2006). Underlaying this concern is his view of philosophy which, in a continuum, from
the beginning of his studies, shows that it must “[...] ‘teach us to carry out the eternal work of
humanity’. It must not only enlighten man about actual states of affairs but also to give leadership
in ethical and religious matters” (De Boer, 1978, p. 497).
5
Nelle lezioni del 1927 (Manoscritto F 1 32) Husserl si domanda in che cosa consista la legge e
quindi che cosa sia la scienza della legge (Gesetzeswissenschaft). Egli risponde distinguendo: (a)
la legge che vale nel nostro mondo circostante secondo la quale il mondo si presenta come omo-
geneo; essa rappresenta la generalità di tutto ciò che è “regolato”, per cui si parla di un “acca-
dere” regolato, di un “divenire” regolato, di una “causalità” regolata; (b) le leggi “esatte” che si
contrappongono alla prima regolarità che può esser definita come puramente “tipica”. La con-
trapposizione si giustifica in quanto l’esattezza, che consiste nel presupporre l’identità della sin-
golarità nelle scienza a priori, può assumere due significati a secondo che l’identità sia intesa
come “‘esatta-ideale’” o come “tipica” (questa è la differenza fra matematizzazione e
generalizzazione).
3.2.1 Logical Aspects of Pre-Categorial Knowledge and What

They Mean for Mathematics Education
Phenomenologically, Husserl worked to delimit an invariance in relation to the

natural world, to expose the characteristics of the way of knowing conveyed in it. He
explained that what is characteristic of the pre-scientific knowledge of nature, pres-
ent in Greek culture, lies in the belief in a undivided-world and in the connections
established that are perceived as empirically definite, because, in the practicality of
everyday life they are valid, and because they make sense within the naïvely assumed
context of vision, and are supported by the uniqueness of the intuitable world. The
basis of such pre-scientific knowledge lies in its concreteness, given in daily empiri-
cal intuition. “If we take the intuitable world as whole, in the flowing present in
which it is straightforwardly there for us, it has even as a whole its ‘habit,’ i.e., that
of continuing habitually as it has up to now” (Husserl, 1970a, p. 31). As a whole, the
world allows us to presume that, if it has been that way so far, it will continue to be
so. “In the natural spiritual attitude, a world that exists is before our eyes, a world
that extends infinitely in space, that is, that was and that will be; this consists of an
inexhaustible multiplicity of things that sometimes persist in their state, sometimes
change, that become interlocked with each other, and then break apart, that carry out
reciprocal actions and, reciprocally are the object of such actions” (Husserl, 2009,
p. 4–5 author’s translation).6
The knowledge of this world is founded on the certainty that the world is based
on the understanding of the perceived physicality of things, of the possible explana-
tions about how they are arranged among themselves, in space and time, and on the
fact that these relationships remain valid in the empiricism of daily experiences.
This is a natural concept of the world which is imposed onto everyday life. “The
world understood as the unity of all constitutive experiences of associative forma-
tions, founded on Glauben (intuition) is empirically cognoscible, according to the
logical principle of induction which encompasses the same breadth of objectifying
experience” (Ales Bello, 1986, p. 148, author’s translation).7 The invariants pointed
out in the analyses performed reveal a structure of science examined here in the soil
in which it takes root, that is, the natural world. This does not import asserting that
science is absolute, but that in science invariant aspects are found which reveal
themselves as inherent to its structure. This idea is found in the Introduction to
Logic and the Theory of Knowledge, when Husserl, in § 2, declares that the idea of
science presents that which is logical as the essence of science in general. He
6
Nell’atteggiamento spirituale naturale ci sta davanti agli occhi um mondo che esiste, um mondo
che si estende infinitamente nello spazio, che è, che è stato e che sarà in futuro; esso consiste di
uma inesauribile molteplicità di cose che ora persistono nel loro stato ed. ora si modificano, che si
entrecciano l’um l’altra per poi separarsi, che esercitano azioni reciproche, e che reciprocamente
le subiscono.
7
Il mondo inteso come l’unità di tutte le esperienze, come formazione costitutiva delle formazioni
associative fondate sul Glauben, è conoscibile empiricamente secondo il principio logico
dell’induzione e questo ha la stessa estensione dell’esperienza obiettivante.
70 M. A. V. Bicudo
affirms: “[...] it is of course that the character of this which is logical is constitutive
of science” (Husserl, 2019, p. 29. author’s translation).8
The following invariants are highlighted: pre-categorical knowledge is structured
by a logic, in which induction, causality, measurement, hypothesis, confirmation of
the hypothesis are present. Logic is founded on a conviction based on a straight,
intuitive view of what is immediately perceived in an environment that surrounds us
and is close to us, coexisting with us. It is maintained by our confrontation between
being seen and seeing, touching, and being touched. This type of coexistence incor-
porates conductive threads that guide us from perception to perception, so that the
surrounding space is revealed as real, as well as time in which perceptions flow as
near and far occurrences, which bring meanings that lead us to infer those that may
or may not occur. Inference is inherent to the style of the experience of the world,
which is taken as an a priori that manifests itself in the total course of experience.
The validity of inference is confirmed in empirical practice, through reasoning
based on approximations that, in an imaginative variation, can be thought of as: hap-
pened fully as anticipated; almost happened, etc. Certainty, or confidence is estab-
lished when expectation, which takes on the role of hypothesis, that the next event
will be similar, based on previous events, in similar circumstances, is confirmed.
The calculation of the event, or its absence, of what is expected is approximate. If it
occurs as expected, this event fills the void of the wait for the hypothesis to be con-
firmed and, based on that causality, it is shaped. It is established with the successful
repetition of what happened and what was expected to happen in a certain way.
“This universal causal style of the intuitively given surrounding world makes pos-
sible hypotheses, inductions, predictions about the unknowns of its present, its past
and its future. In the life of the prescientific knowing we remain, however, in the
sphere of the [merely] approximative” (Husserl, 1970a, p. 31).
According to Husserl (1970a, b), the logic introduced as structuring such knowl-
edge is present in the natural world of Greek civilization and is evidenced as the soil
in which Euclidean thinking flourished. However, it is important to emphasize that
it is also present in the way we deal with the world in which we live, in our daily
lives. It is prior knowledge, as Heidegger (1962, p. 182) refers to it in the “Being-
there as understanding” which brings previous sight, understanding, and interpret-
ing. We conjecture about possibilities, bet on those whose occurrence seems more
possible, making decisions; we calculate distances, even if approximately; we con-
ceive forms and, through actions that in practical life are successful, based on those
forms, use them to build utensils.
In daily school life, pre-categorial knowledge supports the actions, interpreta-
tions, and evaluations performed. The educational work carried out in schools is
based on the intertwining of that knowledge and categorial knowledge, characteris-
tic of science, as conceived and dealt with in western civilization. In the case of
mathematics teaching, it is imperative to point out this intertwining between the
activities proposed and developed, with emphasis on the modification of the
8
“[...] è ovvio allora che il carattere di ciò che è logico è constitutivo per il carattere dela scienza”.
perspective, that is, the difference in the aspects of the objects with which individu-
als are working and the respective ways of treating them. For instance, in the natural
world, counting and measuring are carried out in an approximate way. It is possible
to count stones, group them into small piles, etc. However, numbering stones is an
action that involves aspects present in the constitution and production of idealities,9
such as how to work with the essence of numbers, the way of positioning it, denomi-
nating it, etc. Measurements can be performed in an approximate way, through
steps, size of hands, for instance. Nonetheless, measuring requires a standard, which
is taken and accepted as accurate. The acceptance of the standard can be based on
social consensus. However, this criterion does not satisfy those of a broader general-
ity, which transcend a specific social group or culture. What is necessary to establish
such a criterion? How should exactness be established? The categorial knowledge
method makes a difference.10
Educational action is responsible for highlighting such differences, clarifying
instances when a way of dealing with the knowledge of the world and its practices,
and the decisions resulting from it are acceptable and valid, and others in which
other tools are needed, for instance, scientific tools.11 The formation of individuals
and citizens calls for the discussion of the non-supremacy of one knowledge over
another. Moreover, it requires people to ponder, individually and with peers, in dif-
ferent instances of social organizations in which they operate, about the bases on
which decisions will be made and taken responsibly.
3.2.2 Logical Aspects of Categorial Knowledge and Its

Implications to Mathematics Education
Changes occur within categorial knowledge, in comparison with pre-categorial

logic explained above. In the studies mentioned herein, Husserl conducts analyses
that show the profound difference between the gnoseological process, which is the
base of Euclidean Geometry, and the ontological view that underlies the pre-
predicative science of nature. Euclidean Geometry seeks exactness. Moreover,
along with this search, there is a process of constituting a method, which will prove
powerful in advancing scientific and technological thinking.
As an a priori to Euclidean work, that is, the foundation in which it is based and
generated, is the natural and pre-scientific knowledge of the world. However, it goes
9
Will be explained in the next section.
10
Will be explained in the next section.
11
This article is focused on pre-categorial and categorial knowledge, as my aim is to deal with the
characteristics of mathematics and the mathematization of sciences of nature and, by extension, of
the conception of the world. However, the complexity of life is such that there are situations in
which religious knowledge, or other ways of tackling reality, are more consistent with the issue to
be decided. Examples are the ethical question of turning off equipment that keeps organisms alive,
when there are no longer signs of survival; organ donation; civil disobedience, etc.
72 M. A. V. Bicudo
beyond that, it is dissimilar to nature, through the establishment of a working

method that becomes invariant in the logic of Western science. In The Elements
(Bicudo, 2009),12 Euclid contemplates the method that sustains the transformation
of the primitive empiric mathematical knowledge of Egyptians and Babylonians
into deductive, systematic, and based on definitions and axioms Greek mathemati-
cal sciences. This is a change in the way to produce knowledge, notably founded on
experience (empiria), for one which is based on statements expressed in a formal-
ized way.
The transformation of the knowledge labeled above as primitive is not the work
of a single individual, in the case considered herein, Euclid. It takes place in the
becoming (devir)of the historical-social movement underway in Greek culture
which, in the III A.C., when Euclid lived, already relied on the philosophy of the
pre-Socratics, Parmenides, Heraclides, Democritus, and the philosophers who fol-
lowed them chronologically, Sophists, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, in whose
thinking the supremacy of episteme in relation to doxa is emphasized, with empha-
sis on logos, to sustain true knowledge, which is the subject of their investigations.
Aristotelian syllogistics13 brings a systematization of this logic. It works with pred-
icative judgments, as expressed in predicative language, proceeding to a formaliza-
tion of predicative forms, which support connections of logical reasons, also
formalized.
Aristotle was the first propose the idea of form which was to determine the fun-
damental meaning of “formal logic” [...] Aristotle was the first, we may say, to
execute in the apophantic sphere—the sphere of assertive statements (“judgments”
in the sense expressed by the word in traditional logic) —that “formalization” or
algebraization [...] (Husserl, 1978, p. 42).
In the demonstrations presented by Euclid, we find the idea of formalization, as
well as forms of progression between the prepositions, generating demonstrative
connections. However, the novelty regarding the works of philosophers are the
space-time figures of the surrounding world with which Euclid worked. There is a
crucial modification that remains at the structural basis of Western science: these
figures are not mere representations of the forms of objects as seen in direct experi-
ence with the world, but conceived and dealt with as ideals, that is, as eidetic.14 Such
space- time figures are idealities, resulting from idealization which is constituted
12
This reference is from the first translation of The Elements, from Greek to Portuguese. Translation
made by Irineu Bicudo, a mathematician and Greek scholar. In the “Introduction” which the trans-
lator wrote and is 79 pages long, his erudition and care for the philosophical and historical bases,
thus evidencing his concern with the important work of “translating” such significant work, both
from a theoretical and historical point of view, and whose manuscripts have faded away with the
passage of time.
13
Aristotle, 384 B.C.–Athens, 322 B.C.
14
In Husserlian phenomenology, eidos or essence derives from the noesis-noema movement, that
is, of bringing, by intentionality, what is perceived in the action of perceiving. The idea is that what
is perceived, apprehended at the moment of the act. It is with the idea that consciousness operates,
articulating meanings, given in the experiences of the living-body, and the meanings presents the
language that conveys understanding and interpretations.
and produced in the dimension of subjectivity-intersubjectivity, in which the mean-

ings made within the living-body of each individual, and the meanings conveyed by
the language in the socio-historical-cultural intersubjective sphere are present.
Thus, they become mathematical objectualities. They display a generic universality,
not related to a specific figure.
By following Husserl (1970a, b, c), through imaginative variation reasoning, one
can comprehend how that happens. He exposes his reasoning as follows: space-time
figures are perceived in the common movement of the world, in which the perfec-
tion of the forms is pursued, moving further to imaginary improvements in an open
horizon. Such movement leads to the possibility of seeing limit-shapes that are
shown as convergent poles of improvement. The perfected forms of limit-shapes
lead to pure-thinking, without the contents perceived in the concreteness of the
empiricism. Pure thinking, devoid of perceived contents, is now in the domain of
these figures. “In place of real praxis – that of action or that of considering empirical
possibilities having to do with actual and really [i.e., physically] possible empirical
bodies – we now have an ideal praxis of ‘pure thinking’ which remains exclusively
within the realm of pure limit-shapes” (Husserl, 1970a, p. 26). What is at work here
is “[...] a method of idealization and construction which historically has long since
been worked out and can be practiced intersubjectively in a community [...]”
(Husserl, 1970a, p. 26).
This method of idealization and intersubjective construction creates ideal objec-
tualities that become the soil in which exactness is obtained. With them, it is possi-
ble to determine absolute identities that can be known in a uniquely identical way,
as well as it is possible to generate a systematic and aprioristic method, of maximum
scope. This method points to the methodology of exact measurement.
A separation of empirical practicality is established in relation to ideal practice.
Working in the dimension of ideal practice and with limit-shapes becomes the
methodical practice of mathematicians. They deal with ideal objectivity and not
with empirical content. In the ideal dimension, it is possible to obtain exactness,
which is not achievable in empirical practice. This is because limit-shapes, in their
ideality, enable the determination of an absolute identity. Through this methodical
way of proceeding, it is possible to work with that which is absolutely identical and
methodically univocal. Singular configurations, such as sections of lines, triangles,
or circles, can be highlighted.
Geometry is structured through in this practice. Given this mode of operation, by
virtue of its generating method, it is possible to construct other figures, which are
determined in a unique way. “For in the end the possibility emerges of producing
constructively and univocally, through an a priori, all-encompassing systematic
method, all possibly conceivable ideal shapes” (Husserl, 1970a, p. 27). With the
support of Aristotelian logic, the field for the formalization of geometry is open and
can be realized. The connection between logic and science is thus established, in
this specific case, geometry. The connections of inferences are systematized and
explained at the dimension of the idealities of the geometric bodies and logical laws
with which geometry operates.
74 M. A. V. Bicudo
The novelty of Euclidean geometry, in relation to pre-categorial science, lies in

exactness, operated by an indirect mathematization. Indirect because it does not
work with the given object in its empirical concreteness, but with the idea and the
idealities—perfect objects, as the methodof obtaining exactness enables the produc-
tion of perfection.
Euclidean Geometry’s implications to mathematics educations. It has been a
strong component of the curricula that prevail in Western civilization schools. Its
logic underpins the very structure of traditional curricula; from mode of inference
laws ranging from the simplest to the most complex topics, even imposing prereq-
uisites for content to be addressed. Moreover, the chronological time that prevails in
this structure is idealized, not considering what is experienced in the movement of
teaching and learning of the people involved in such actions. With regard to the
mathematics curriculum, geometry is always present as content to be worked on and
studies reveal that it supported the teaching of Mathematics. Imenes (1989) explains
that the teaching of mathematics follows The Elements of Euclid, in terms of the
content presented in that work, but mainly through the didactic model derived from
it. He states that “Although it was not written for didactic purposes, for many cen-
turies, that work was used as a reference for the teaching of Euclidean Geometry, as
a true textbook” (Imenes 1989, p. 193).
Given the intertwining between the geometric figures that “can be visualized” in
the natural world and the limit-shapes with which Geometry works, within the
didactic work of school routines, it is easy to naively overlap them, without due
care, regarding the change of perspective in that view. Formal science, which works
with idealities, and empirical factual science have been regarded by many mathema-
ticians and mathematics teachers as equivalent. The gap between the work at the
level of formalized geometry and the work at the level of pre-categorial knowledge
has been increasingly established with greater vigor. The difficulties in understand-
ing what scientific “truths” say about the world multiply. They grow even larger
with Galileo and the “transposition” of Euclidian geometry into physics, extending
toward the sciences of nature and the spirit.
3.2.3 The Loss of Meaning Implicit in the Transposition

of Geometric Logic into Physics and What it Means
for Mathematics Education
This transposition occurs within the framework built by Galileo15 and other scholars
who came after him in the following centuries, assuming his vision, corroborating
it with that of science which prevails today.
In order to understand what was said regarding the loss of meaning in the title of
this subitem, it is important to always bring the meanings opened by the word
15
Galileo Galilei; Pisa, February 15, 1564 — Florence, January 8, 1642.
meaning in Husserlian phenomenological philosophy. Meaning is made for the sub-

ject at the moment he/she receives, through sense organs (touch, smell, vision, taste,
hearing, and kinesis), the aspects of the thing shown to them in the dialectics of
noesis-noema,16 which now reveals itself as a phenomenon. It is effected in the
articulation between the different sensations performed by the living body, in the
stream of consciousness, considered in the conception of transcendental17 phenom-
enology. Therefore, the loss of meaning occurs when there is a distancing from such
experiences and the concept expressed and defined in language. Therefore, it is not
a social, historical, and cultural transformation of the concept, but a dichotomy
between what is perceived and lived, and what is expressed either in pre-categorial
or categorial language.
Therefore, the loss of meaning mentioned in the title of this sub-item refers to the
distancing between the experience felt by the individual in the empiricality of the
world in which they live and the ideality of the objects constituted and produced in
the dimension of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. It is noteworthy that the intuition
of the individual about what they see and experience occurs in the flow of experi-
ence and in the carnality of the living body18 (Bicudo, 2020). This intuition engen-
ders acts of transcendental consciousness and transcends subjectivity, through
language-mediated expression, launching itself into the intersubjective sphere,
intertwined with history and culture, in which the individual is with the other
(whoever they may be) as a living body.
With the work of Galileo, this distancing is strengthened, as the theory that is
under construction moves away from the vision of the natural world, which sustains
Euclidean work, and begins to work with the idealities made explicit by concepts
and formulas. There is an epistemological cut and a change in the view of reality.
With Euclid, reality is what he experiences and where he acts in the natural world,
also understood from the perspective of the logic of the knowledge thus produced.
With Galileo and his science that is always under construction; the reality in which
the thinker-scientist moves is that which springs from theoretical truths. An episte-
mological cut, as, in the first case, with Euclid, meaning is effected within the real-
ization of experience, and the explanations are structured according to a
non-propositional, exact logic. In the second case, with Galileo, it is necessary to
16
The structure of intentionality, as exposed in Husserl’s writings, can be analyzed through two
components: the object as intended, that is, as something to which consciousness is directed, the
noema, and the conscious act that intends the object, the act of noesis. The noema secures the side
of the object in the intentional relationship and the noesis highlights the side of the individual,
intending the ways in which it is given to consciousness.
17
The living-body, as explained by Husserl’s (2002) phenomenological investigation, is shown as
the center of orientation to the world, the other and the self. It is the core of distinctive and diffuse
sensations, of the constitution of mental and spiritual life. The living-body, unlike other physical
bodies, moves by itself, showing autonomy and freedom, to come and go, to direct itself in a tar-
geted manner.
18
Transcendental consciousness is understood as not regional, fluid, moving, originator of mean-
ing; therefore, it is not separated from the body, even though it transcends and goes beyond the
body, through its characteristic intentionality.
76 M. A. V. Bicudo
seek links between conceptual language, the logic that structures the theory that is
already sustained in the logical system, engendered by Aristotle and the world expe-
rienced, in which experiences are expressed in a common language.
Apparently, this difference between pre-categorial and categorial logic could be
understood as that between spontaneous and scientific language, which are concepts
exposed by Vygotsky. However, it is not just about using signs (psychological tools)
as language, before understanding their function or meaning. That author distin-
guishes between two types of concepts, namely scientific and spontaneous, each
encompassing different genetic origins and histories. Scientific concepts evolve
through instruction; spontaneous concepts emerge from everyday experiences
(Vygotsky, 1986). According to Vygotsky, the development of scientific and spon-
taneous concepts follows different paths. The former moves from abstract to con-
crete whereas the latter moves to a greater abstraction, starting from concreteness.
However, when Husserl mentions the distancing that initially occurs with Euclid’s
work and what is established beginning with Galileo’s work, this does not refer
solely to ways of expressing different concepts, but to the vision of reality assumed
and the logic that structures the synthesis of ideas that a concept expresses. This is
the shift from pre-categorial to categorial knowledge.19
Despite the loss of meaning pointed out, from the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury, science continued on its path of development. It is based on the logic of
Euclidean Geometry that opens possibilities for all ideal figures, generally imagin-
able, to be constructively and univocally generated, by a systematic aprioristic
method of maximum extension.
Back to Galileo. The work of Galileo mathematizes the physics then known.
Thus, there is a great change in the view derived from the way Galileo works with
physical bodies and their movements in space, as idealities, thus achieving accu-
racy. The work is supported by the logic of Euclidean Geometry by the possibility
of generating constructively and univocally, through a systematic aprioristic method
of maximum extension, all ideal figures in general imaginable, as stated above.
The work of Galileo leads to a mathematization of the physics then known. The
great modification of perspective that occurs comes from Galileo working with
physical bodies, and their movements in space, as idealities, thus obtaining
19
I believe that working with language as a mediator between subjective dimensions (psychologi-
cal and all others the living-body encompasses) and intersubjective, thus also referring to social,
historical, and cultural contexts, evidences two aspects that must be assumed. One concerns the
view of reality seen as primarily social, in which language is a given, as well as the relationships
among individuals, and the positions they occupy in the social structure. Presuming that aspect
takes as given (takes for granted) that language is first; with immediate concreteness. Another
aspect evidenced is not questioning the constitution and production of language and social organi-
zation. This does not at all mean to affirm that man comes first and creates social structure. It
means to affirm that, in the movement of life experienced by the individual, in the world where
there are others, the individual-word-other; intertwiningly, social, historical, and cultural reality
are constituted and produced. As I see it, Husserlian phenomenology strives to comprehend that
movement.
accuracy. To do so, he took Euclidean Geometry and its method as given, that is, as
being there in the world to be put into operation and expanded.
The change from one paradigm to another is intensified and expanded in its
strength with the operationalization of accuracy, sustained by measurement. It is
conducted through the art of measurement.
The art of measuring discovers practically the possibility of picking up as [standard] mea-
sures certain empirical basic shapes, concretely fixed on empirical rigid bodies which are in
fact generally available; and by means of the relations which obtain (or can be discovered)
between these and other body-shapes it can determines the latter intersubjectively and in
practice univocally – at first within narrow spheres (as in the art of surveying land), then in
new spheres where shape is involved. (Husserl, 1970a)
Galileo had before him Euclidean geometry, contained in a well-articulated the-

ory, according to the laws of Aristotelian logic, which brought within its structure
the idealizing method and the possibility of new and accurately measurable cre-
ations. This procedure leads to a rupture in the conceptions assumed between men
of science and commoners. It establishes a separation between those visions, inten-
sified by the interest in the pure application of geometry to physics, without ques-
tioning followed by enlightening understandings of the basis of scientific knowledge
rooted in the logic of the knowledge of the natural world. According to Husserl
(1970a), the origin of theory was hidden, and this concealment generated, within the
scope of modern science in the West, a crisis seen as insufficient understanding of
the world.
In an imaginative variation, the author explains:
Galileo said to himself: Wherever such a methodology is developed, there we have also
overcome the relativity of subjective interpretations which is, after all, essential to the
empirically intuited world. For in this manner, we attain an identical, nonrelative truth of
which everyone who can understand and use this method can convince himself. Here, then,
we recognize something that truly is — though only in the form of a constantly increasing
approximation, beginning with what is empirically given, to the geometrical ideal shape
which functions as a guiding pole. (Husserl, 1970a)
The intention of getting to know the world in a scientific way engenders the need
to discover a method to systematically construct, previously, the world and its cau-
salities and confirm this construction in a safe manner. Given the impossibility of
conducting direct mathematization to fulfill this intention, indirect mathematization
is performed. It should be emphasized that in the knowledge of the pre-categorial
world, a universal concrete causality prevails, anticipating that the intuitable world
can only be intuited as an open world, on an infinitely open horizon.
To be sure, this inductivity was not understood by Galileo as a hypothesis. For him, a phys-
ics was immediately almost as certain as the previous pure and applied mathematics. The
hypothesis also immediately traced also for him (its own) path of realization (a realization
whose success necessarily has the sense in our eyes, of a verification of the hypothesis – this
by no means obvious hypothesis related to [previously] inaccessible factual structure of the
concrete world). (Husserl, 1970a, p. 39)
78 M. A. V. Bicudo
In the scientific knowledge of physics, which is emerging, it is necessary to seek

far- reaching methods; measure speeds; accurately apprehend universal causality.20
It is necessary to determine, in a positive way, the knowledge generated based on
proof of hypotheses. In the quest to account for his task, Galileo used practical
action, obtaining accurate measurements and determinations. And the meaning of
the logic of the art of measurement, whose crucial characteristic is to always be in
motion perfecting the measure, toward accuracy remained hidden. The implicit
meaning in this logic: improve, repeatedly and continuously21 the method for
obtaining exactness.
This goal can be achieved through an indirect mathematization of the intuitable
world with the application of general numerical formulas that, once found, can
serve for its application, to conduct the factual objectification in particular replace-
able cases.
The formulae obviously express general causal interrelations, “laws of nature,” laws of real
dependencies in the form of “functional” dependencies of numbers. Thus, their true mean-
ing does not lie in the pure interrelations between numbers (as if they were formulae in the
purely arithmetical sense); it lies in what Galilean idea of universal physics, which its (as
we have seen) highly complicated meaning-content, gave as a task of scientific humanity
and in what the process of its fulfillment through successful physics results in – a process
of developing particular methods, and mathematical formulae and “theories” shaped by
them. (Husserl, 1970a, p. 41)
The very meaning underlying this mathematization and which is hidden when
scientists and the science teachers turn into technicians are not the connections of
numerical values, mathematical relationships, operations, etc., but the Galilean idea
of universal physics. The enthusiastic interest of the researcher of nature, that also
becomes that of the mathematician, is in formulas. The former is aimed at the natu-
ral scientific method, understood as the method of true knowledge. The latter aims
to work with exact formulas.
What does formulation bring? Implicitly, its logic results in loss of meaning.
That is why the formulation provides numbers, in general, based on general propo-
sitions that express laws of functional dependencies, moving away from the con-
creteness of the empirical world and freeing thought to advance toward imagined
possibilities, however not in the dimension of fantasy, but delineated in the context
of the previously determined prediction. This freedom is expanded with the help of
algebra, through the symbols that replace figures and their respective ways of oper-
ating with them, always working in a categorial dimension. The effect of this way
of thinking seems to be beneficial, on one hand, and sinister, on the other. First of
all, algebraic formulations mean “an immense extension of the possibilities of the
arithmetic thinking that was handed down in old, primitive forms. It becomes free,
systematic, a priori thinking, completely liberated from all intuited actuality, about
numbers, numerical relations, numerical laws” (Husserl, 1970a, p. 44).
20
Husserl shows how such quest led to analytic geometry.
21
In mathematics, the idea of always and continuously takes on the meaning of infinitum. It oper-
ates as a center of convergence.
It is necessary to clarify that this broadening had already occurred with arithme-
tic, which also brought about freedom from empiricism. There is an intersection
between arithmetic and algebra which is therefore in the nature of their objects;
symbols. However, the former deals with symbols which denote numbers, opera-
tions, and relations, such as equality. The latter broadens the symbolic set and the
notion of operations beyond usual numbers. In the words of Husserl, “the sign for
+, for instance, is not the sign for arithmetic addition, but a general connection, for
which law such as ‘a+b=b+a’ are valid” (Husserl, 1962, p. 94, translated by the
author). This means, for instance, that while in arithmetic the equality ‘2 + 3 = 3 +
2’ is valid, in algebra, the law given by ‘a+b=b+a’ doesn’t even require that a and b
be numbers but establishes a link for all objects which are compatible with it. In this
sense, there is a broadening, a liberation from arithmetic, from all intuitive reality,
made possible by algebra. However, following the thoughts of Peacock (1830), gen-
eralizing arithmetic is just one of the possible explanations for algebra. From that,
in its modern conception, one can deduce what Husserl called “supreme algebraic
thought” (Husserl, 2012, p. 35), which enabled a theoretical leap for mathematics
and cognitive for human thought, as it deals with “‘something in general’ construct-
ible in pure thought, in pure-formal generality” (Husserl, 2012, p. 35, author’s
emphasis). Thus, algebra allowed mathematical thought to be freed from all empiri-
cism, from all factuality, expressed objects defined solely through a determined
axiomatic which “in relation to its matter, (...) remain entirely indetermined”
(Husserl, 2014, p. 186).
The beneficial aspects brought about by formulation activity show the amplifica-
tion of what has already been determined. However, these same benefits encompass
an emptying of their meaning, as pure intuitions are transformed into pure numeri-
cal figures, with algebraic configurations, which, as previously explained, make it
possible to express “supreme algebraic thought” (Husserl, 2012, p. 35).
The beneficial aspects, which can be understood, show the expansions of what is
already determined. However, these same benefits they also bring an emptying of
their meaning. Pure intuitions turn into pure numerical figures, with algebraic con-
figurations. In algebraic calculus, the geometric meaning automatically recedes, or
is abandoned. One calculates and, only in the end, remembers that the numbers
should mean greatness. One calculates with symbols. “This process of method-
transformation, carried out instinctively, unreflectively in the praxis of theorizing,
begins in the Galilean age and leads, in an incessant forward movement, to the high-
est stage of, and at the same time, a surmounting of, ‘arithmetization;’ it leads to a
completely universal formalization” (Husserl, 1970a, p. 45). Thus, the distance
between the intuitions that occur in the empiricalness of experiences enjoyed in the
natural world increases, moreover, there is a rupture caused by the change of point
of view and by the non-reflection on what is being done and obtained with this
practice.
The emptying of meaning is accentuated with technization. Within the frame-
work of the mathematical disciplines themselves, for example, with operation with
letters, by connecting signs (+, x, =, etc.) and according to the connective ordering
rules of the game. The original reasoning, even if regarding formal truth, is left out
80 M. A. V. Bicudo
of the loop. One operates, obtains correct results, because they are accurate. Thus,
“purely geometric thinking is also emptied, as well as its application to factual
nature, to scientific-natural thinking”. It is important to emphasize that the possibil-
ity of getting lost in technization is inherent to the essence of every method.
Therefore, natural science undergoes a multiple transformation which also encom-
passes the concealment of meaning. The natural world becomes a forgotten founda-
tion of meaning in natural science.
It falls onto mathematics education to focus on the beneficial sides of generaliza-
tion and formalization, as well as the loss of meaning, when working with formulas
and their importance from the perspective of scientific explanations and, at the same
time, highlight what worldly reality they hide. It is always work that develops in a
middle line interweaving scientific practice and philosophical thinking regarding
the meaning of the world and what science and technology mean in it and enables
such meaning to be accomplished.
3.3 Mathematization as Methodological and Ontological

Foundation of Reality: What it Means
The mathematization initiated with Galileo’s work which prevailed throughout

Modern Age, with the establishment of Positivism, imposing itself as a way of
investigating and obtaining accurate knowledge, which is considered “true” knowl-
edge. It advanced into technical and technological practice, throughout the contem-
porary era, with the advent of mathematical logic, analysis and calculus, algebra,
and its possibilities of application to natural sciences, and gradually to spiritual
sciences as well. This expansion was possible by replacing the pre-scientific view of
nature with an idealized one, which could be the stage for hypothetically correct
investigations, because they are accurate. They support explanations and predic-
tions also calculated by general numerical formulas. These lead to the objectifica-
tion of particular cases, of events that occur at the level of the natural world. This
results in the application of the general to the particular, that is, from theoretical
laws to particular cases, consummating the application of theory to practice.
At the heart of this conception is the meaning of the hypothesis, always under-
stood as hypothesis, although confirmed by scientific research. The methodical pro-
cess of establishing, proving, and assuming proof brings in itself the possibility of
errors which are calculated and assumed within the process. It is a method that
propagates the idea of continuous improvement, understood as progress. “In the
total idea of an exact Science, just as in all the individual concepts, propositions,
and methods which express an ‘exactness’ (i.e., ideality) – and in the total idea of
physics as well as the idea of pure mathematics – is embedded infinitum, the perma-
nent form of that peculiar inductivity which first brought geometry into the histori-
cal world” (Husserl, 1970a, p. 42). The idea of infinitum encompasses that of
increasing refinement that offers a better representation of nature. This view pre-
sumes supremacy and underscores explanations and predictions in the diversity of
ways that life manifests itself. It fulfills its destiny, that of constant improvement,
becoming absolute. It adorns reality with robes woven with symbols, masking expe-
rienced reality. It shows a reality seen and understood through the lens of
mathematical-scientific idealities.
Thus, there is an inversion in terms of the conception of the reality of the natural
world. This reality is affirmed in the positivity of scientific laws and is no longer
seen as the soil in which opinion and reason are exercised, explaining a pre-
categorial and epistemic knowledge about reality. One enters the path opened by
Galileo’s physics and ends up pontificating the so-called scientific “truths,” which
become synonymous with what is, that is, with being. The prevailing view is that of
an infinite world obtained by a rational, coherent, and systematic method. With such
a view, an infinite horizon opens up for mathematics. It has supported sciences, both
through the possibility of applying its theories and by serving them as a methodical
and ontological foundation, consummating an ontology of mathematics, which
Husserl called the mathematization of nature.
Here, a forcible break is made in the realm of the positivist sciences. Truth is
dictated by scientific theory, which postulates mundane reality. It goes beyond lived
reality and the experiences of individuals who, in their sensitivity, perceive nuances
that are dismissed by scientific theory. This break implies a schizophrenic view, as
the individual must deny their sensitivity and perception and impose the “scientific”
truth on themselves. There is a distinct separation between pre-categorial and cate-
gorial knowledge, and what science states about the world does not make sense to
human beings, taken in their subjective individuality.
Husserl argued that the new sciences—those built from Galileo’s work—
undoubtedly seemed initially successful when they displayed their favorable results
through the application of their theories. However, he considered that this initial
impulse gave way to a sense of failure. He claimed that this is the beginning of “a
long period extending from Hume and Kant to our time, of enthusiastic struggle for
a clear, reflecting understanding of the true reasons for this centuries world failure”
(Husserl, 1970a, p. 11). He stated that the sciences dissolve internally but fail to
understand the meaning of their original foundation when it appears as a branch of
philosophy. This means that when sciences are separated from philosophy, they stop
thinking philosophically about its meaning, what it says about the world, humanity,
and life itself. Thus, a crisis is established in the European community, initially
latent, then acute, which signals the meaninglessness of its cultural life, viewed in
terms of its total existence. This is the meaning of the crisis of European sciences,
explained in several works by that author, mainly in The Crisis of European Sciences
(1970a). For Husserl, the origin of theory was hidden, and this concealment gener-
ated a crisis understood as the lack of understanding of the world in modern Western
science.
It is this understanding, that is, the search for meaning that the world brings us,
that needs to be resumed. It is not a matter of denying logic, practice, and the impor-
tance of “European Science,” but of understanding it, in its genesis and in the
82 M. A. V. Bicudo
dimension of its own practice and the respective reach of its explanations and fore-
casts. To this end, philosophical thinking, characterized by being comprehensive,
critical, and reflective, becomes necessary. It enables us to go beyond scientific
discourse that positions itself as absolute to pontificate about life and the world and
always ask: what do these statements mean to me, to the community in which I
participate, to society in which I am inserted regarding different issues? It is in the
play, between philosophical thinking about science and scientific expertise that the
sovereignty of scientific thinking and practice, installed in our world, comes under
suspicion, and can be weakened. The imposition of scientific thinking leads indi-
viduals to distance themselves from the world of life experience; moreover, it fos-
ters distrust and rejection of original intuition, replaced by the preciseness and
certainty of science.
This rupture must be addressed within the realm of mathematics education;
its goal must be the understanding of the very production of science and what it
says about the reality of the world. It is necessary to exert philosophical think-
ing regarding what scientific knowledge means and what it brings in terms of
improvement of living conditions, for individuals, society, and the planet itself.
This thinking is critical and reflective, it expands to the manner of knowing of
each person individually, and the community in which they live, enabling the
comprehension of one’s own feelings and perceptions, the ways of expressing
them, and those brought about in their daily life in which they interact socially
with others.
This alternation, from mathematical and scientific statements to pre-catego-
rial ones and vice-versa, opens possibilities for emphasizing diverse ways of
knowing and talking about the world, both in the realm of other concerns, such
as, for instance, religious ones, as well as those of cultures and peoples inhabit-
ing other regions. Therefore, horizons of understanding and ways in which the
meaning of the world can be reestablished are expanded. It is necessary to foster
credence and acceptance of the original intuition and think about their relativity,
which can be overcome by confrontation and subsequent social consensus of the
group. In this game, intuition always means something to the person, under-
stood in its individuality, and needs to be maintained in the dialogue with others,
that is, in the dimension of the intersubjectivity of life with the group, as long as
it persists as a clear view, which occurred, for the person, at the moment it hap-
pened. Moving toward the realization of critical-reflective thinking, it is neces-
sary to bring statements based on idealities and the formulas built with them, in
order to consider what is obtained with this generality and what it means in the
activities performed with students. The realization of this thinking requires that
individuals, in their subjective dimension, be focused and attentive to the move-
ment of the articulations that are being made for them, as well as to the language
that expresses them and supports the communication with other people with
whom they are interconnected in the dimension of intersubjectivity. In this
dimension, mathematics education is made in its becoming, that is, in its ways
of happening.
3.4 Mathematics Education: Necessary

Philosophical Thought
This text involves issues to be worked on in mathematics education, outlining a way

of understanding the production of mathematics and its role in the constitution of
scientific and technological thinking present in the world we live in today, and the
urgency of not succumbing to the loss of meaning of life and of the world, as we are
immersed in a sea of explanations and predictions issued and supported by the sci-
entific and technological apparatuses. It pointed out that mathematics education can
contribute to the accomplishment of this task in a unique manner, which is critical
and urgent for humanity. The justifications developed in this chapter and that sup-
port this statement are associated to the possibility of mathematics education work-
ing with mathematics, as critically and reflexively understood, and produced in
Western civilization. This manner is characteristic of philosophical thinking, which
does not mean that it is based on works of philosophers and their different visions
of mathematics and science, but, only, that it performs an exercise of understanding
what is said, so as not to take it as absolute truth and to always and repeatedly won-
der if what the affirmation tells about the body of knowledge being worked on, as
well as the life of people, the community that they share, the social organization in
which they live and worldly reality.
The work of Edmund Husserl, mainly “The Crisis of the European Sciences,” a
theme so dear to him, was used to elicit a way to understand the movement of pro-
duction and establishment of sciences in the world in which we live. These sciences
present a universalizing vision of the reality of the word, to the extent that their logic
and theoretical and methodological framework are assumed both by Western and
eastern civilizations, particularly as far as technology is concerned.
To explain the aforementioned production, the ways of knowledge that are char-
acteristic of a science present in the natural world were brought forward, named by
the above-mentioned author as pre-categorial, and the logic underlying them was
evidenced.22 It was explained that the pre- categorial mode of knowledge is the soil
in which Euclidean geometry flourished, giving rise to a different mode of knowl-
edge, categorial or scientific. The characteristic of this way of knowing is to work
with idealities constituted and produced based on a shift of view from the empiri-
cally given in the reality of physical and concrete bodies, to the idea or eidos or
essence, sustaining the idea in language and in procedures that lead to formalization
and categorization. The expansion of Euclidean geometry from mathematics to
physics, with Galileo, was also explained, evidencing the transformations that are
being implemented and maintained throughout the Modern Age, entering the twen-
tieth and twenty-first centuries. These transformations bring mathematics, its theo-
ries, and possible applications, as well as its logic, now formal and algebraic. An
ontology that speaks about the world and its reality is established, from the perspec-
tive of Western science.
Descriptions and analyses regarding this affirmation are presented in §9 of The Crisis of European
22
Sciences (Husserl, 1970a).

84 M. A. V. Bicudo
The universalizing trend of this view leads mathematics educators to seek gate-
ways by bringing ways to introduce mathematics in other cultures, criticize accu-
racy, and the respective value judgments that can underlie it, work with approximate
knowledge, work with concrete materials, and everyday situations.
This chapter argues that, underlying these different attempts, is the question of
the intertwining of pre-categorial and categorial knowledge, the respective perspec-
tives in which they are produced and, specially, the imposition of the mathematical-
scientific-technological way of conceiving and dealing with worldly reality. It is
argued that it is necessary to know about the specificities of mathematics and sci-
ence to conduct work that opens horizons for critical and reflective thinking about
their importance and what they say about the world, understanding, at the same
time, that they do not dictate the truth nor are they the guardians of it, much less
establish the parameters that should guide human knowledge and the ethics of per-
sonal and social interrelations. This chapter underlies the understanding that form-
ing individuals and citizens requires that the knowledge of sciences, as present in
the logic of the “European sciences,” be the object of teaching and learning in cur-
ricular activities of schools, and that, in doing so, the discussion of the non-
supremacy of one knowledge over the other must be included in the agenda;
moreover, that an exercise of philosophical thinking be carried out, leading people
to ponder, individually and with others with whom they live, in different instances
of the social organizations in which they work, about the bases on which their deci-
sions will be made and responsibly assumed.
The conduction of such thinking requires that people, in their subjective dimen-
sion, be focused and attentive to the movement of the articulations that are being
created for them, as well as the language that expresses them and that supports the
communication with other people interconnected in the dimension of intersubjectiv-
ity. Through this dimension, in the dialogical situation, understood as being both an
atmosphere for acceptance of others and for revealing arguments and ways of
understanding, mathematics education develops in its becoming (devir), i.e., in
ways of happening.
Due to the requirement for extending the text, at the end of each item when I
focused on what it means to mathematics education there was no dialogue with the
texts listed in the references indicated regarding the same themes, in the realm of
mathematics education. Such a dialogue would be fruitful. Nonetheless, it would
render this chapter too long. Initially, it had 20 pages, as required by the editors of
this book. In order to comply with reviewers’ requests, it was expanded to 27 pages.
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Chapter 4
Networking Phenomenology and Didactics:
Horizon of Didactical Milieus with a Focus
on Abstract Algebra
Thomas Hausberger and Frédéric Patras
4.1 Introduction
In his broad overview of the philosophy of mathematics education as a sub-field of

mathematics education, Ernest (2018) emphasized the following characterization of
philosophy as a discipline: “Philosophy is about systematic analysis and the critical
examination of fundamental problems. It involves the exercise of the mind and
intellect, including thinking, analysis, enquiry, reasoning and its results: judgements,
conclusions, beliefs and knowledge.” To wit, philosophy is about knowledge and
the mind’s access to knowledge and, as a consequence, there are many ways to
apply philosophical concepts, results, or methods to mathematics education research
(MER). Among them, we feature first that one should adopt a “critical attitude” to
claims, theories, methodologies of MER. Second, one should use contributions of
philosophical domains (ontology and metaphysics, aesthetics, epistemology, ethics,
etc.) and approaches to enhance theoretical development in MER as one cannot
disentangle the ambition to offer a secure basis for knowledge from the very analysis
of what knowledge is, should be, and how it can be acquired, in mathematical
education theories as elsewhere.
Unfortunately, editorial constraints imposed by the main mathematics education
journals, notably the standard format of an article, which must include analysis and
interpretation of data, rarely allow time for discussion of the foundations of the
theories that are applied and for consideration of potential developments. In other
words, the vocation of mathematics education to improve teaching and learning
T. Hausberger (*)
IMAG, Université de Montpellier & CNRS, Montpellier, France
e-mail: thomas.hausberger@umontpellier.fr
F. Patras
Laboratoire J.A.Dieudonné, Université Côte d’Azur & CNRS, Nice, France
e-mail: frederic.patras@unice.fr

88 T. Hausberger and F. Patras
would pull the field toward a form of pragmatism that has little tolerance for the
subtleties of language offered by what some reviewers call ‘philosophical jargon’.
Such use must show the full force of the results produced or else the same discourse
cannot be held in a more common vocabulary without significant loss of nuance.
This creates a strange situation, where the methods used by the science that aims to
study the process of knowledge acquisition depart from the way science is usually
built. Indeed, science in general does not progress primarily by experiments and
data analysis, but by a combination of methods that run from theoretical constructs
and research programs to actual experimentation. The interplay of practices, not a
dogmatic and uniform approach, is the key to progress, also in MER. From our
point of view, MER has a lot to gain from taking more advantage of philosophical
writings, which we will try to highlight in this chapter by taking up Husserl’s
theoretical developments on the notion of horizon.
The inclusion of Husserlian horizons in MER has already been proposed by
Zazkis and Mamolo (2011) as a way to interpret the “knowledge at the mathemati-
cal horizon” (KMH; Ball & Bass, 2009). We will begin by briefly presenting this
work and show, in the “critical attitude” of Philosophy, how, although relevant in the
context of teacher training, it moves away from Husserl’s project. It also presents
limitations when it is a question of carrying out a more advanced analysis of the
cognitive processes at stake in learning a topic such as Abstract Algebra.
In the following sections of the chapter, we come to the core of our contribution,
which is mainly theoretical in nature, and present how we have articulated
phenomenology and mathematics education in order to study the manifestation and
acquisition of structuralist thinking in groups of university students. We will rather
say “didactics of mathematics” since the main theory considered in the sequel,
Brousseau’s (1997) theory of didactical situations (TDS), takes its origin in the
French tradition of the field (Artigue et al., 2019).
On the methodological level, our work may be described as a form of networking
of theoretical frameworks (Bikner-Ahsbahs & Prediger, 2010). The same
phenomenon in mathematics education, namely how students solve a given problem
in Abstract Algebra, can be analyzed from the perspectives of both Husserlian
phenomenology and Brousseau’s theory. The networking of didactical theories is a
research practice allowing the combination of complementary insights. It also leads
to the linking of theories at different levels and by means of different strategies (by
comparison, contrast, synthesis, local integration, or more). In our case, the joint
analysis (first stage: comparing/contrasting) of the data led to the identification of
common features (second stage: combining/coordinating) between Brousseau’s
didactic contract and Jauss’ horizon of expectation in Hermeneutics (Hausberger &
Patras, 2019; Hausberger, 2020).
In a third and more advanced stage of networking, synthetizing and integrating
locally are relevant concepts whenever theoretical development is aimed at. This
chapter is a first step in this direction as it aims at a local integration of theoretical
constructs of phenomenology to supplement TDS. To do so, we will connect the
notion of milieu in TDS with that of world in Phenomenology and draw further
connections around the notion of horizon. Although the richness of the notion has
4 Networking Phenomenology and Didactics: Horizon of Didactical Milieus… 89
not been completely taken advantage of in our previous work, we will not come
back here to the horizon of expectation but focus mainly on Husserl.
His philosophy is thus contributing to unraveling the hermeneutical and phenom-
enological dimensions of the learner’s interaction with the milieu. Key is the learn-
er’s intentionality. Intentionality, in a phenomenological sense, does not refer here
merely to intentions (goals such as acquiring understanding or insights, for exam-
ple), but in a subtler way to the structures of conscience underlying the relationships
between the individual and the world. This idea of intentionality comes from a scho-
lastic notion, which Husserl inherited through Brentano. In medieval philosophy,
intentio referred to the application of the mind to an object. We owe it to Husserl to
have made it a foundation of Phenomenology. Intentionality has multiple forms and
accounts for example for both the gaze we direct on the surrounding things and the
theoretical gaze we have on mathematical objects. All these dimensions contribute
to make it a central idea for the use of phenomenology in didactics; hereafter, we
will focus on intentionality in relation to the structures of consciousness underlying
the relationships between the learner and the milieu. This philosophical analysis at
the level of principles will serve as a background to analyze, in a second step, how
these ideas unfold to grasp key aspects of elaborated theoretical knowledge in
Abstract Algebra. This is where the key notion of horizon in the sense of Husserl
comes into play and supplements the more general one of intentionality, as horizon
structures are indeed structures of intentionality.
Our theoretical elaboration will be illustrated in the last section of the chapter
through the analysis of excerpts of a dialogue between a pair of advanced students
(PhD level and beyond) engaged in solving Abstract Algebra tasks. We will unveil a
large spectrum of horizon types, without attempting to be exhaustive, featuring in
particular a richness and complexity that depart from the descriptions offered by
Zazkis and Mamolo’s interpretation of horizons in the teacher education context.
4.2 Horizons in Teacher Education
Zazkis and Mamolo (2011) focus on the “knowledge at the mathematical horizon”
(KMH; Ball & Bass, 2009), a component of the subject-matter knowledge, in the
classical sense of Schulman, which designates (primary or secondary) teachers’
advanced mathematical knowledge (from university or college) that may prove
useful in teaching at school. Their interpretation is driven by the metaphor of
horizon as a place “where the land appears to meet the sky” and the distinction
between inner and outer horizon, after Husserl. Whereas the inner horizon
corresponds to “aspects of an object that are not the focus of attention but are also
intended,” the outer horizon represents the “greater world” in which the object
exists. Zazkis and Mamolo connected these two types of horizons to the first two
components of KMH, respectively: the surroundings of the current topic under
study and “the major disciplinary ideas and structures.” Subsequently, Mamolo and
Pali (2014) attempt to add in their descriptions, knowledge related to practices and
values, in other words to account for the remaining two components of KMH: “key
mathematical practices” and “core mathematical values and sensibilities.” But they
didn’t draw further connections with phenomenology. Their goal is to study how
these horizons may impact teacher’s actions in teaching situations.
As a main case study, Mamolo and Taylor (2018) exemplify connections between
Abstract Algebra content (a part of the “blue sky”) and secondary school content.
Although numerous examples are provided, by pointing out to studies in the volume
contributed to, these examples rely on a similar schema: the object attended to is
part of the school curriculum and its outer horizon, inside Abstract Algebra, consists
of the “generalities which are exemplified in the particular object” (Zazkis &
Mamolo, 2011, p. 10). In Philosophy, this is called a type-token relationship, and it
certainly doesn’t exhaust the possible types of relationships, as we will see at the
end of this chapter. To summarize, in this approach, the focus is how Abstract
Algebra understanding may influence decision-making in teaching situations at
school. The analysis of intentionality does not aim at relating abstract structures to
lower-level mathematical objects in mathematical practices. Nor does it aim at
shedding light on the ways and means a consciousness interacts with abstract
mathematical objects (and thus achieves learning in Abstract Algebra). In particular,
horizons of objects belonging to Abstract Algebra (horizons inside the “blue sky”)
are not considered, whereas they will be central in our work that focuses on higher
education teaching and learning.
4.3 Modeling Teaching-Learning Phenomena
The Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS; Brousseau, 1997) offers a general model
and tools for the analysis of any didactical system: the main point is that a learner
interacts with a milieu shaped by the teacher, according to a didactical contract.
Learning is then asserted when the adequate adaptation to the milieu may be
observed in the student.
Precisely, the didactical contract designates the “system of reciprocal obligation”
that determines “explicitly to some extent, but mainly implicitly – what each partner,
the teacher and the student, will have the possibility for managing and, in some way
or another, be responsible to the other person for” (Brousseau, 1997, p. 31). It is
expected from the milieu to be antagonistic, in the sense that it will provide
retroactions (to the students’ attempts to solve the problem) and allow the target
knowledge to emerge due to the “internal logic of the situation.” At this stage of the
learning process, the milieu is a-didactical, in the sense that students shall experience
an “absence of [direct] intentional direction” (didactical intention). The new
knowledge acquires the status of a piece of the mathematical text at the later didactic
phase of institutionalization by the teacher.
In fact, Brousseau distinguishes different patterns of situations, which are usu-
ally integrated in a sequence: an action pattern, in which students act on a material
milieu; a formulation pattern, which aims to make explicit the students’ “implicit
models of action”; and finally a validation pattern, in which a debate is organized to

discuss the truth value of the students’ findings. Brousseau refers to cognitive
psychology when it comes to identifying these implicit models of action and
understanding their role in the acquisition of knowledge. He mentions the conceptual
field theory (TCF) program of Vergnaud (1990), and others can be cited (Dubinsky’s
APOS theory, Tall and Vinner’s theoretical construct of concept-image, etc.). If such
a study falls within the scope of the interactions between psychology and didactics,
our aim in this chapter is to show what an interaction between phenomenology and
didactics can bring to shed light on the psychogenesis of concepts when a learner is
confronted with an a-didactical milieu.
This is where the notion of horizon comes into play. Before presenting Husserlian
horizons and their connections to Brousseau’s theory, we need to introduce other
works that extend TDS on some aspects that may be related to phenomenology. In
a pioneering paper, Brousseau and Centeno (1991) investigated how teachers handle
the temporary and transient knowledge of pupils to promote learning. They called
didactic memory of the teacher the knowledge that teachers may evoke on purpose
to reactivate and facilitate the transformation of previous knowledge toward the
target knowledge. Flückinger (2005) combined the perspective of TDS with TCF to
study how students’ numerical knowledge on division evolved through the
construction of schemes connected to classes of situations partly organized by the
teachers and partly emerging as new knowledge in the conceptualization process.
She called such a feature the didactic memory of students since responsibility for
memory processes has been partially devolved to students through a specific
didactical contract: for instance, it is the students’ responsibility to decide which
objects of knowledge are the most pertinent to handle the assigned problems. We
argue that the notion of horizon is a tool to capture features of the interaction of the
students with a-didactical milieus and will give evidence of its relevance to analyze
the evolution of forms of knowledge from implicit models of action to their
explicitation (formulation) and then to a path toward a formal proof (validation).
4.4 The Horizon According to Husserl
We assume, then, that the construction of meaning, as we understand it, implies a

constant interaction between the student and problem-situations, a dialectical
interaction (because the subject anticipates and directs her actions) in which she
engages her previous knowings, submits them to revision, modifies them, completes
them or rejects them to form new conceptions. The main object of didactique is
precisely to study the conditions that the situations or the problems put to the student
must fulfill in order to foster the appearance, the working and the rejection of these
successive conceptions (Brousseau, 1997, p. 83).
In the global project summarized by Brousseau’s quote, two questions will retain
our attention and govern our approach to Husserl’s ideas in an a-didactical context.
First, how to describe the modalities of interactions between the student and the
milieu? This can be done at two levels: first, a functional, descriptive level based on
experience or observation. For example, a group of students can start playing a
game naively to “see how it works” and decide later on a protocol to look for an
optimal strategy, or look immediately for a strategy, or mix the two approaches in
various ways that the teacher can observe and partially expect. Achieving such a
description is important because it can allow the concrete engineering of didactical
situations. However, the question can be addressed at the higher level of principles:
why is such a thing as the interaction between a student and a milieu possible? What
are the available tools to speak of such a thing? How can it be described in a way
that will allow didactics to explain and theorize the corresponding processes?
The other question, closely connected in our opinion, as we shall see, is how do
previous knowledge play a role in this interaction? Of course, we know practical
answers: for example, these knowledges are the tools that will allow her to grasp
and analyze the problems. But, once again, at the level of principles, the question is
harder to treat: why is it so, for example, that a student will be led to use induction
to solve a counting problem and not a direct argument (a bijection with a set of
known cardinality, for example)? How is such a thing as a path of successive
guesses, modifications, completions of knowledge possible? Or, more precisely, in
what space of cognitive actions, theoretical behaviors, does this path live?
Let us consider the milieu from a phenomenological point of view. Recall from
Brousseau’s Glossary (2010) that “a situation is characterized in an institution by a
set of relations and reciprocal roles of one or more subjects (pupil, teacher, etc.)
with a milieu, aimed at transforming that milieu according to a project. The milieu
consists of objects (physical, cultural, social or human) with which the subject
interacts in a situation.”
In the phenomenological language, the subject interacts with a world. Most of
the time, this world is the natural world, the Lebenswelt (the world of life). The key
role of the Lebenswelt for Phenomenology was emphasized by Husserl in various
texts, two of the most relevant for us here being the Crisis (The Crisis of European
Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl, 1954) and his contemporary
essay on the Origin of Geometry. A key thesis, defended in both texts in different
forms, is that modern mathematics ultimately refers to a proto foundation in a
system of original evidences whose origin is to be found in our immediate
relationship to the world (that is, to the Lebenswelt). Mathematical ideas thus have
a complex historicity, which is not only the result of their history but also of this
necessary reference to fundamental intuitions. These ideas are extremely important
and of considerable significance for didactics, but we will not go down that road
here: instead, we will emphasize the role of the Lebenswelt in the constitution of the
horizon of mathematical objects and concepts in the classroom.
Another important observation is that, however important the Lebenswelt, it is
not the only “world” we can be embedded in or interact with: “I can for example
also occupy myself with pure numbers and laws of numbers. The world of numbers
is also there for me; it constitutes precisely the field of objects where the activity of
the arithmetician takes place. During this activity, she will focus on some numbers
or numerical constructions surrounded by an arithmetical horizon, partially

determined, partially undetermined” (Husserl, 1913, [51], our translation).
A key step when interacting with a world, whatever it is, is to change attitude: the
same person can behave naturally and interact with her Lebenswelt, her surrounding
world, or switch to a theoretical attitude and behave as an arithmetician, or a student
in arithmetics. The corresponding world will then be shaped differently. A milieu in
the didactical sense can be thought of as a particular kind of world. It exists as a
milieu precisely because the student (or the teacher) adopts toward it the right
attitude. For example, scissors, a pen, and a sheet of paper can constitute a milieu
suited for elementary Euclidean geometry or be simply the tools given to a kid
to play.
In Phenomenology, a world cannot be disentangled from its horizon. The horizon
is, roughly stated, the configuration of possibilities, meanings, tools, intentions that
shape the world/milieu. The horizon is at the same time what makes the dynamical
and constructive interactions between the subject and the world possible and the
“place” where they occur. A feature of the a-didactical horizons we will consider is
that the didactical memory of students is a key ingredient in their constitution and
structuration. When the young student considers numbers and properties of numbers,
she may already know that there are operations she can perform: addition,
subtraction, multiplication. She also maybe knows that there are more complex
operations like division or exponentiation that she remembers only vaguely, and she
knows that using them would require some care. Lastly, she maybe has learned
more advanced ideas, for example the reasoning by induction, but at the moment
does not connect this knowledge to numbers, although she could remember it at
some stage of a reasoning. These operations, some clearly determined, some still
undetermined or under-determined, are one component of the horizon of numbers.
They are also tools that I can use to reshape the current milieu. For example, I can
transform the problem of computing (6+7)*2 into the problem of computing 13*2.
But in the horizon of possible shaping my interactions with (6+7)*2 other paths of
reasoning would be possible, for example its transformation into (6+7)+(6+7).
Here, again we can observe constructive interactions between phenomenology and
didactics. The notion of didactic memory, together with its theorization and
documentation on classroom experiments, can enrich phenomenology by
documented examples, where the behavior of students can be analyzed. Conversely,
phenomenology enriches the didactical theory with its precise tools of analysis,
especially of the theoretical endeavors and ideas formation in the context of
interactions between an individual and the world.
Studying the milieu from the phenomenological perspective leads to answers to
our initial questions. The horizon is a locus where interesting, dynamical,
transforming interactions with the milieu take place. Prior knowledge are some of
the components of the milieu, they also contribute to the shaping of the horizon and
to the action on the milieu. The horizon and the didactic memory are certainly not
exhausting the analysis of the interactions with the milieu, but our thesis is that they
are an important constituent that allows us to understand various important didactical
phenomena.
4.5 Toward a Typology of Horizons
In cognitive sciences, Jorba (2020) argues that the perceptual intentional horizon in
Husserl’s phenomenology, besides being a general structure of the experience,
extends to a viable notion of cognitive horizon that relates to affordances (possibilities
of action present in experience). She proposes “to characterize a specific structure
of the cognitive horizon – that which presents possibilities for action – as a cognitive
affordance. Cognitive affordances present cognitive elements as opportunities for
mental action (i.e., a problem affording trying to solve it, a thought affording
calculating, an idea affording reflection)” (p. 847). Following Husserl, she also
features various types of horizon structures that we will use later to characterize
several structures showing up in (a)-didactical experiments. We detail their content,
building on her analysis.
The inner horizon accounts, in the phenomenology of perception, for the various
ways in which I can have access to an object: “Every experience has its own
horizon... this implies that every experience refers to the possibility... of obtaining,
little by little as experience continues, new determinations of the same thing. (...)
Thus every experience of a particular thing has its internal horizon” (Husserl 1973,
§8: 32, quoted in Jorba, 2020). In didactics, we propose to use the notion as referring
to the various access I can have to an object (a notion, a concept...) that are directly
contained, either in the object itself (for example as direct consequences of its
definition or as properties of its components), or in a given milieu. Here, “given”
refers to the components of the milieu that go immediately with the (a-)didactical
situation. Notice that this is a subtle notion. Whereas the inner horizon of a spatio-
temporal object or being amounts simply to the various experiences I can make—
for example by turning around a building, visiting it, seeing its roof from an airplane,
etc.—the inner horizon of a theoretical object such as a mathematical one highly
depends on the way this object is given. A sphere defined using the classical axioms
of Euclidean geometry can be identified with an object in the space R3 equipped
with a positive definite quadratic form, but the (technical, conceptual, methodological)
horizons that go together with these two definitions are quite different. In other
terms, this notion of inner horizon also depends on the learner’s background.
Outer horizons refer instead to the possibility of putting an object (notion, con-
cept,…) in relation to other objects or in another context (Jorba, 2020, p. 849ff). In
our previous example, quadratic forms, metrics, scalar products belong to an outer
horizon of spheres in naive Euclidean geometry. Phenomenology itself enters the
scene by providing theoretical tools to analyze how horizons structure the relation-
ships of a consciousness to its objects, whatever they are.
This phenomenology of horizons is further enriched by two families of relations.
In our didactical context, we propose to call associative outer horizons those
relations based on relating two objects, two notions in a non-straightforward way
(once again, what straightforward means will depend on the learner’s background).
The example of spheres and quadratic forms can be analyzed that way, for example.
Instead, inferential outer horizons will denote relations acquired through reasoning,
provided new elements, notions, ideas, insights result in this process. For example,
the late nineteenth-century insight that a finite set is a set that cannot be put in
bijection with a proper subset could be analyzed that way: appealing implicitly to
the infinite to define finiteness, besides being counter-intuitive, requires upgrading
the horizon of finite collections through a process that, at least at the very beginning,
relies more on technicality and reason than intuition.
Turning back to Jorba’s general program, we agree with her analyses relating
cognitive horizons and cognitive affordances and point out that the didactic approach
to Jauss’ notion of horizon of expectation in (Hausberger & Patras, 2019) goes in
the same overall direction. Many features of phenomenological horizons of the
Lebenswelt actually translate into features meaningful in a didactical context. For
example: “Every cogito, an external perception or a remembering, and so on, for
example, carries with itself in a detectable manner an immanent potentiality: the
one of possible life experiences, linked to the same intentional object, that the self
can realize […]. In each cogito, we discover horizons” (Husserl, 1950, p. 181). They
induce potentialities, in the natural behavior, for example the possibility to turn my
head to the left to discover new components of the countryside, or in arithmetics, the
possibility to perform first a sum or a product in a given formula, with some priority
constraints on the operations that contribute to shape the horizon of possible
arithmetical actions.
An important point that we will start to develop implicitly in this chapter is that
the notion of horizon is not a vague concept that would allow to speak of certain
phenomena without giving conceptual and methodological tools to investigate their
properties and structure: “I can investigate an intentional experience, which means
that I can penetrate its horizons, interpret them and, that way, unravel potentialities
of my life and, on another side, clarify, at the objective level, the targeted meaning
[Ibid].”
Taking again the elementary example of arithmetical operations, the expression
(2+3+4)*(2+1) can be transformed into (5+4)*(2+1), (2+7)*(2+1), (2+3+4)*3, and
so on. These potentialities are all open and part of the horizon of the expression.
They are the beginning of paths that will lead the student (hopefully) to 27. When I
analyze the structures underlying these potentialities, key ideas of arithmetics will
show up if I push the analysis to its limit. For example, the equivalence of the first
two transformations—which is not obvious—points out at the associativity of
addition, an highly sophisticated notion that, in its modern, structural interpretation,
appeared relatively late in mathematics (Leibniz, Grassmann, …).
The second question we raised in the beginning of section 4 (how does prior
knowledge impact the interaction of the student with the milieu?) has started to be
addressed by noticing that knowledge is a key component of the structure of the
horizon and by pointing out at the relevance of didactic memory in our context. Let
us expand briefly on this and make these observations concrete. If I already know
1
On the phenomenological definition of the horizon and its fundamental properties, see also
op. cit., p. 82.
what associativity and distributivity mean, I will be able to devise more complex
strategies to solve equations and will be much more confident on their validity.
However, the question relates to a very general feature of intentionality that goes
beyond the particular case of didactic memory, namely the fact that each life
experience has an horizon of anteriority (my past experiences and the memory I
have of them). This horizon of anteriority has several components. Short-term
memory is important, for example, when solving a problem. The ideas and results I
just obtained contribute to shape my current understanding of the problem in its
present state. In the French educational system, this phenomenon is illustrated by a
marked difference between exercises, usually focusing on a few directly related
questions, and problems, much longer and where drawing connections between
arguments in different parts of the problem is essential to its solution. In such
situations (exercise, problem) where didactical and a-didactical components are
mixed (depending on the reliance of the solution on already acquired skills), an
horizon is constructed largely internally to the situation—in the sense that it is
shaped by previous answers. Long-term memory impacts differently the interactions
of the student with the milieu. For example, recognizing certain prototypical features
of a question (for example, to perform a computation involving sums and products)
will lead her to use the priority rules and distributivity laws for arithmetical
operations that she had learned some time ago and had remained before one among
the many and largely indistinct components of the horizon of the problem.
In conclusion, horizon, didactic memory, and their constructive interactions can
be understood and documented in many ways. We will focus now on a specific
example in order to illustrate the fertility of our theoretical ideas on concrete
empirical data.
4.6 Application to Abstract Algebra
The purpose of this section is to study, in the spirit of Husserl, the learning processes
of advanced students engaged in solving a mathematical problem in Abstract
Algebra: the theory of banquets. Cognitive processes will be explored using the lens
of phenomenology with the notion of horizon as the main tool: progresses in solving
the problem are thus related to changes in the horizon structure which potentially
result in new cognitive affordances.
Throughout our analysis, the main questions will therefore be: Which is the main
intentional object (or noema) that consciousness is focusing on in crucial moments
of the mathematical experience? What is the underlying motivation structuring
intentionality and, more generally, what is structuring its noetic moment: the way
mathematical conscience is conscience of… intuition of… grasping of…? How are
inner and outer horizons of intentional objects structured by the learners’
interpretation of the milieu and background knowledge (or didactic memory)? We
will rely on language and other semiotic representations produced by learners as
warrants for our claims; moreover, the chronology of reasonings makes it possible
to detect partly implicit features of cognitive anticipation of the horizon through the
evidence of how the horizon unfolds in subsequent cogita.
Let us now present the problem. Mathematical structuralism has had a large
impact on contemporary mathematical practices (Patras, 2001) but also on modern
didactics of mathematics. Various members of its founding fathers have indeed been
strongly influenced by the problems that arose together with the emergence of
“modern maths” where abstract axiomatic structures serve, especially in algebra, as
organizing principles in the exposition of mathematical theories and as tools to pose
and solve mathematical problems. Pre-structuralist theories about numbers,
polynomials, and other standard mathematical objects appear as a background to
motivate and apply the abstract unifying and generalizing point of view of structures.
Structures also give rise to new questions: Which identity principle to adopt (which
are the natural morphisms between objects of a given type of structure)? How to
classify objects up to isomorphism? Which structuralist theorems govern the
decomposition of objects into simpler ones? As a piece of didactic engineering
(Artigue, 2014), the theory of banquets (Hausberger, 2020; Hausberger, 2023) has
been designed in order to tackle these kinds of questions in the context of an Abstract
Algebra course at the transition between undergraduate and graduate studies in pure
mathematics. The main prerequisite is a course in Group Theory, so that students
have already encountered similar structuralist questions and results that will be
thematized in the context of banquets.
A banquet is a set E endowed with a binary relation R which satisfies the follow-
ing axioms: (i) No element of E satisfies xRx; (ii) If xRy and xRz then y = z; (iii) If
yRx and zRx then y = z; (iv) For all x, there exists at least one y such that xRy.
In part I.1 of the worksheet, students are asked the following questions:
1 a. Coherence: is it a valid (non-contradictory) mathematical theory? In other
words, does there exist a model?; b. Independence: is any axiom a logical
consequence of others or are all axioms mutually independent?
In part I.2, they are asked to classify banquets of small cardinalities and link
banquets of order 4 with their knowledge in Group Theory (in particular with the
cyclic group of order 4). The abstract/concrete relationship is reversed in part II of
the worksheet, which begins with the empirical definition of a table of cardinal
number n as a configuration of n people sitting around a round table. Its aim is to
prove that any banquet decomposes as a disjoint union of tables (the “structure
theorem”). We won’t give more details here since excerpts of students’ work that
will be analyzed are restricted to part I.1 as we prefer to insist on our method, its
significance, and concrete use than on all the conclusions that can be drawn from
experiments on the theory of banquets.
The banquet structure possesses a large variety of models since the system of
axioms may be interpreted in quite different worlds, beginning with the empirical
interpretation of guests sitting around tables (whence its name): xRy if x is sitting on
the left (or right) of y. Other domains of interpretation include Set Theory (the
binary relation is represented by its graph), Functions (xRy ⇔ y = f(x) defines a
function f according to axioms (ii) and (iv); the other two axioms mean that it is
injective without fixed points), Permutation Groups (f is a bijection when E is finite,
in other words a permutation without fixed points) or even Matrix Theory and Graph
Theory (see Hausberger, 2021, for a full mathematical analysis). The structure
theorem of banquets thus corresponds to the well-known theorem of canonical cycle
decomposition of a permutation, but the analogy remains hidden since the binary
relation of banquets is different from binary operations that define groups. These
remarks explain why the theory of banquets is mathematically rich but may not be
found in any textbook (it is equivalent, in the finite case, to permutation groups).
Moreover, it is a simpler theory (in the sense of mathematical technicality) than
Group Theory, and it carries the underlying intuition and mental image of guests
sitting around tables (a wedding banquet).
4.7 Horizons of the Abstract Structure of Banquets
Question I.1 of the worksheet (coherence; existence of a model; independence of

axioms) may be regarded as a first situation in the sense of Brousseau, dedicated to
logical analysis. Its milieu contains the axiomatic definition of the banquet structure,
the concept of model of a system of axioms and the language of Set Theory.
The intentional object is, in general, the object (of senses, or abstract, theoreti-
cal…) toward which consciousness is directed. In this exercise, the main intentional
object is the definition of banquet. At any moment during the solution of the exer-
cise, this consciousness and the attention given to the axiom system is embedded
into various horizons. The important point is that these horizons are not fixed: every
time consciousness is going to be directed toward a particular feature of the axiom
system, new horizons will present themselves as surrounding this state of con-
sciousness. On the other hand, taking into account the presence of these horizons
will help students to progress and understand the axioms in different ways, so that
consciousness itself will evolve accordingly.
What we claim here is simple, but essential and too often forgotten by authors
appealing to Phenomenology as a method of philosophical investigation: one can
describe the process of thinking by investigating such phenomena. Comprehension
of learning in particular is a topic particularly well-suited to such analyses. Our
claim is that they help understand the didactical processes and could also be useful
in didactical engineering by providing tools to analyze what steps students are
expected to perform to reach a satisfactory construction of knowledge.
In the first part of the exercise, the investigation of the meaning of the definition
of banquets goes through the logical investigation of the system of axioms
(coherence and independence) using a semantic approach (construction of models).
The related work of the two (very advanced) students, called Alice and Bob hereafter,
took the form of a dialogue that has been registered and transcribed. It is made of a
sequence of 31 speeches. The integrality of the dialogue can be found in Hausberger
(2016, annex 4), we use here only some parts to illustrate and support our analysis.
Numbers indicated below in front of Alice or Bob statements correspond to the
position of the statements in the dialogue: (5) will refer to the fifth speech among
31, and so on, so as to indicate the progression of the argumentation.
Concretely, investigating the meaning of the definition could usually be done in
three ways:
• Appeal to prior knowledge (their own didactic memory, entangled with the
teacher’s didactic memory)
• Try to grasp directly the meaning of the axioms (with some training it is indeed
possible to have a purely formal understanding of algebraic axiomatic systems)
• Explore empirically the axioms’ content
In general, mathematical thinking is a blend of several such processes. Each
approach goes together with distinct intentional modalities. We will try to account
for those that appear in the two students’ dialogue. It will appear that several
successive horizons may be uncovered and disentangled.
1. First horizon (inner): theoretical memory. As a first attempt, students try to use
direct knowledge on binary relations (antisymmetry, irreflexivity) to make sense
of the axioms. They appeal therefore to didactic memory in one of its simpler
forms that we may call formal or theoretical: going back to the known properties
of the objects and notions under consideration.
(1) Alice: Classical, we specify the structure through relations, okay.
(2) Bob: Antisymmetry [about axiom (i)].
Our memories shape horizons of possibilities and horizons of understanding. In

her statement, Alice explicitly acknowledges the idea that a structure can be defined
through relations and that such a fact belongs to classroom knowledge. In
Brousseau’s language, this idea has been already institutionalized, it is contained in
the paramathematical2 concept of structure and is also based on the notion of a
binary relation taught in Set Theory. Recognition of institutionalized knowledge is
essential; it provides a ground on which further advances can be made.
2. Second horizon (outer): natural semantics. Interestingly, this first (inner) horizon
of the banquet structure soon leaves place to a quite different horizon evoked by
the name of banquet:
(3) Alice: there’s one guy on the right and one on the left, that’s the idea; there’s nobody
sitting alone at a table.
This second horizon is thus driven by natural semantics, empirical knowledge,

and more generally our embedding in a Lebenswelt: the mental image of banquets
acquired from perceptual experience. The theory is embedded in a wider, extra-
mathematical, context. Here, didactical engineering is involved since the name of
2
Paramathematical concepts are “named objects whose characteristics are studied but which have,
for various reasons, not yet been organized and theorized, such as the notion of function in the 19th
century, or that of equation in the 16th century, or that of variable in the 20th” (Brousseau, 1997,
p. 59). The students have not been taught Category Theory, the mathematical framework that aims
at theorizing the notion of structure, but Alice has been introduced to Model Theory in her studies.
the theory is a main didactical variable (in the sense of TDS) of the situation. By the
name « theory of banquets », the instructor has chosen to drive the learners toward
a certain type of models and intuitions – he enforced the building of a specific outer
horizon.
We emphasize that “natural semantics” refers here to the fact that students give a
meaning to the theory of banquets by a “fulfilling of intentions of signification,” in
the language of Husserl. By referring to daily life situations, the theory becomes
concrete and can be grasped: an element of the set E is now “a guy at the table.” The
desire to associate a meaning to the axioms (intention of signification) starts to be
fulfilled.
3. Third horizon (outer): associative. The second horizon is subsequently aug-
mented with knowledge from elementary set theory and logic to give rise to a
third horizon with powerful cognitive affordances to construct models and check
the validity of statements.
As it is based on relating two horizons—the outer one of natural semantics of
banquets and the inner one of set theory—the new horizon is associative:
(5) Alice: To show that it’s not contradictory, you can show that there exists a model. I sug-
gest we take one guy. No, one guy doesn’t work, 2 guys sitting next to each other. [...]
(7) Alice: Let’s take E={a,b} and for the relationship the couples (a,b) and (b,a). So it is
indeed a model. [...]
(9) Alice: Yes, a set with 2 elements, they are sitting opposite each other… obviously,
there is at most one on the right and one on the left, they are in relation with the one
opposite.
Here, Alice makes explicitly a move from natural to formal semantics. She uses
theoretical memory to relate the non-contradiction of axioms with the existence of
a model but appeals then to the idea of people around a table to build a model. In
speech (7), Alice and Bob have obtained a first mathematical statement: the axiom
system has a model and is consistent. Speech (9) interestingly confirms the formal,
mathematical, sentence by a translation into natural semantics.
4. Fourth (outer) horizon: inferential. The dialogue proceeds with some easy argu-
ments on independence that will be omitted. Later, as they stumble on a diffi-
culty to deny (ii) while keeping other axioms (that is, when trying to prove the
independence of axiom (ii) from the others), Alice feels the need to produce
another interpretation of banquets:
(15) Alice: So this thing, it’s nice… there are some and at most one, so this thing, it’s a
function. To x we associate the unique y such that xRy. And we have the injectivity a priori.
The relationship with functions is thus the main component of a fourth horizon
that may be qualified as both outer and inferential since it involves several concepts
not directly related to the axiomatic system (multivalued functions—Bob mentions
for example the possibility of two images of an element—injectivity) and results
(equivalence of injectivity and bijectivity for functional relations between sets of
same finite cardinal number), and leads to a break-through:
(26) Alice: Perhaps an infinite set is needed, it is possible.

(27) Bob: I have the impression that this is not possible.
(28) Alice: It’s a bijectivity thing that makes you need an infinite set.
A formal proof of the necessity of infinite cardinality is not produced, but what
they achieve is enough for the production of the counterexample they were
looking for.
The experiment we have treated allows us to reach several conclusions. The solu-
tion to an exercise is a dynamical process. Understanding it requires the understand-
ing of how the students’ thoughts evolve and move forth and back from the object
under investigation to a series of insights, some of which are given with the problem
(inner horizon: the acquired knowledge directly related in that case to relations and
axiomatic systems), some others have to be found in relation to outer horizons that
unravel progressively.
We feature once again that, in spite of a common reference to Husserl’s horizons,
our approach is much more general than a mere type-token analysis, as it appeared
for example in Zazkis and Mamolo. Indeed, whereas the latter is restricted to
understanding the subordination of a given mathematical object or problem to a
more advanced and general theory, our use of horizons gets into the very dynamic
process of knowledge-building in the classroom. The semantical aspects involved in
the idea of banquets are a good illustration of the generality of Husserlian use of
intentionality and horizons.
4.8 Conclusion and Perspectives
The main contribution of this chapter is the further development of Husserlian hori-
zons, first introduced in a didactical context by Zazkis and Mamolo (2011), as tools
to analyze the shifts of attention and interconnectedness of knowledge in learners
attending to an abstract structure. Our extension encompasses a larger spectrum of
horizons and methods in a pioneering application in the context of university math-
ematics education, allowing for a fine-grain analysis of the work of learners engaged
in the elaboration of a structuralist mathematical theory around the given structure.
The features of horizons that we managed to identify in relation to the manifesta-
tion of structural sense among a pair of advanced students are but a first step in
understanding the genesis of structuralist thinking in educational contexts. At the
theoretical level of frameworks, we contribute by combining/coordinating notions
from TDS with the perspective of phenomenology, in the spirit of networking. We
believe that such a dual framework may be applied in a large variety of contexts and
educational levels. We also point out the coordination with studies in cognitive sci-
ences. These links should be investigated further in subsequent research.
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Chapter 5
Specifying Defining, Generalising
and Abstracting Mathematically All Seen
as Subtly Different Shifts of Attention
John Mason
5.1 Introduction
Mathematics is often referred to as ‘abstract’, usually in reference to the use of

multiple unfamiliar symbols. Although it is true that the objects and concepts of
mathematics are rarely tangible, using the label abstract overlooks and obscures
abstracting as a process, as a change of relationship between a person and a set of
words, and hence a change of relationship with self- constructed ‘virtual objects’.
My aim here is to examine more closely mathematical abstraction as a process, in
relation to specifying, defining and generalising.
5.1.1 Background Frames
Mathematics teaching is taken here to mean the initiation of pedagogic and mathe-
matical actions which tailor learner experiences of encountering mathematical
actions, themes, and the use of their own powers (Gattegno, 1981 p6; Mason, 2002a,
2008; Mason & Johnston-Wilder, 2004a, b). In order to inform choices of
pedagogical actions it is necessary that aspects of a teaching situation resonate with
or trigger relevant actions, and this triggering can be enriched through the use of
labels for distinctions which enable discernment of those choices. Labels are
gathered together as frameworks, and it is these frameworks of distinctions which
J. Mason (*)
Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Oxford University, Oxford, UK
e-mail: john.mason@open.ac.uk
104 J. Mason
constitute the theoretical foundations of mathematics education (Love & Mason,

1992, p29–53). As will emerge, this is itself a process of the abstract becoming
familiar through abstracting. Herewith, some relevant frameworks.
Brunerian Spirals
Inspired by Jerome Bruner’s articulation of three modes of (re)presentation (enac-

tive, iconic, symbolic) (Bruner, 1966), my colleagues and I at the Open University
(1982) found it instructive and informative to propose a spiral of developmental
experience in which, through manipulating objects which are familiar and confi-
dence inspiring, learners get a sense of some possible relationships, and over time
find themselves articulating those relationships more and more succinctly, until the
labels/relationships themselves become confidently manipulable, to be used to
explore yet more relationships (Floyd et al., 1981; Mason, 2002b; Mason &
Johnston-Wilder, 2004a, b) (Fig. 5.1).
Whenever confidence ebbs or confusions arise, the sensible thing to do is to
backtrack to a more confidently manipulable situation in order to reinforce and
re-substantiate the sense of relationships and to add substance to the articulation.
The purpose of manipulating, what George Pólya (1962) and Mason, Burton, &
Stacey (1982/2010) referred to as ‘specialising’, is to develop a sense of possible
relationships, and perhaps to articulate these as properties that may hold in more
general situations. When confidence ebbs, moving back down the spiral to a domain
of greater confidence from which to rebuild ‘a sense of’ relationships and properties
is a useful way to regain confidence and to re-vivify familiarity.
The purpose of specialising is to gain both confidence with and insight into pos-
sible generalisations which are conjectured, followed by attempts to justify these.
As Whitehead (1911 p4) put it, “To see what is general in what is particular and
what is permanent in what is transitory is the aim of scientific thought.” This aligns
with the ancient Greek meaning of theorem as ‘a seeing’, so that proofs become
attempts to get other people to ‘see’ what I am seeing. These ‘seeings’ involve
subtle shifts in how the person attends to the ‘objects’ being attended to (Mason
1989), as will emerge shortly.
Fig. 5.1 The MGA spiral

5 Specifying Defining, Generalising and Abstracting Mathematically All Seen… 105
Example Spaces
There is a strong link between MGA as a developmental sequence, and the notion
of an accessible example space (Watson & Mason, 2005), which refers to
mathematical objects, construction tools, and relationships, which underpin or
constitute appreciating and comprehending. I use ‘appreciating and comprehending’
in place of ‘understanding’, which for me is too highly jargonised to be a useful
construct. An example space, accessed from a particular direction according to
current context and triggers, constitutes the domain of familiar and confidently
manipulable mathematical objects accessible to the learner in any given situation,
not simply as a collection, but as a gateway to generality.
Forms of Attention
Over some 70 years of being inducted into and engaging in mathematical thinking,
and some 50 years of trying to support and stimulate people in their teaching of
mathematics, I have become more and more convinced that attention is a core aspect
of human psyche, playing a key role in the success or failure of classroom
interactions. Discerning different ways to attend can be used to make sense of many
classroom phenomena.
The fundamental conjecture is that when teacher and learners are attending to
different things, their attempts to communicate are at best impoverished. But even
when attending to the same thing, they may be attending in different ways, and still
their communication is likely to be at best incomplete.
Until relatively recently, William James was one of the few philosophers to
address questions about attention. Whereas James (1890) felt that attention was not
responsible for “discerning, analysing or relating but that the most that can be said
is that it is a condition of our doing so” (p426–7), I find it useful to think in terms of
different ways of attending, which include the following readily recognisable forms:
Holding Wholes (gazing); Discerning details; Recognising Relationships;
Perceiving Properties (as being instantiated); Reasoning on the Basis of Agreed
Properties.
These forms of noticing were derived from juxtaposing personal experience with
a neo- Pythagorean perspective on qualities of number (Bennett, 1993). Wholes are
of course associated with unity or oneness; distinctions involve ‘this-not-that’, a
quality of twoness; relationships involve three elements, two discerned wholes held
in relationship and so mediated by a third; properties involve four elements as
components of activity; reasoning involves five elements concerned with identity
and potential (Bennett, 1993; Shantock Systematics Group, 1975).
Readers familiar with van Hiele levels (van Hiele-Geldof, 1957; Usiskin, 1982;
van Hiele, 1986; Burger & Shauenessy 1986), will recognise a close relationship
between the ‘levels’ and these five forms of attending, which is interesting because
the forms of attention were derived independently, from observing my own
106 J. Mason
experience while informed by the systematics of Bennett (1993; Shantock

Systematics Group, 1975). The significant difference is that whereas van Hiele lev-
els apply to developmental stages of young children and their awareness, these
forms of attention are states which are far from stable. Indeed transitions or shifts of
attention can be very rapid indeed and are rarely progressive in the sense of
proceeding from wholeness through distinctions to relationships and beyond, but
rather tend to bounce around as new distinctions create new wholes, instantiated
properties give rise to fresh relationships and new distinctions, and so on. Readers
will be offered contexts in which to experience this for themselves in what follows.
5.1.2 Attention, Awareness, and Consciousness
A much-repeated adage says that if you want to know about water, don’t ask a fish.
Put another way, “you are (where) your attention is”; what you are attending to is by
definition what you are experiencing, what you are aware or conscious of. Experience
is informed by attention, and attention is what is experienced. William James (1890
p4202) put it that “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” Only those items
which I notice shape my mind; without selective interest, experience is an utter
chaos (his italics), and (p424) “each of us literally chooses, by [their] ways of
attending to things, what sort of a universe [they] shall appear to themself to inhabit.”
I use awareness in the sense of Gattegno (1970, 1987) to mean having an action
become available to be enacted, whether automatically (such as adjusting pulse rate
or skin pores), subconsciously (such as breathing or reacting to stimuli), or
consciously (choosing to act). Subtle difference in how that attention is structured
makes different experiences and different awarenesses available.
William James (op cit p91) claimed that “All attention involves excitement from
within of the tract concerned in feeling the objects to which attention is given,”
which aligns with the poetic voice of Mary Oliver (2015) “Attention without feeling,
I began to learn, is only a report. An openness – an empathy – was necessary if the
attention was to matter.” I see the different forms of attending as forms of empathy
with mathematics and mathematical thinking. For an overview of contemporary
philosophical discussions around attention, awareness, and consciousness, see
Watzl (2011a, b).
5.2 Method
My approach is fundamentally phenomenological as I am interested in the lived

experience of thinking mathematically rather than collecting observations of other
people’s behaviour and trying to infer experience. Consequently, my ‘method’
involves offering readers tasks to undertake during which they may catch a taste of
abstraction and other mathematical actions as a process.
The psychological phenomena of interest here, attention, and its co-relates

awareness and consciousness, are not amenable to extra-spective research methods,
in which indicators of phenomena are chosen and measured under varying
conditions. My method involves intra-spection (being careful to avoid retrospective
“I must have …” constructions) mixed with inter-spection, in which colleagues
offer brief-but-vivid descriptions of experiences, seeking resonance and dissonance
with colleagues, and building up a collection of shared experiences and descriptive
labels. In order to maintain validity, these must be tested against the experiences of
further colleagues, who then continue the same process. This is the essence of the
Discipline of Noticing (Mason, 2002c).
5.3 Shifts of Attention
Ways in which mathematical actions labelled by specifying, defining, generalising

and abstracting mutually intersect and interact are elaborated below. At first, forms
of attending are italicised so as to alert the reader to the possibility of noticing them.
5.4 Generalising and Abstracting
The transition from recognising a relationship in a situation, to perceiving a prop-

erty as being instantiated, is characteristic of the mathematical act of generalising.
By contrast, but not always a sharp distinction, abstracting mathematically involves
the act of defining, which means declaring that ‘anything which has these properties
is considered to be a (label provided)’. In Mason and Czarnocha (2021), we consid-
ered an instance of a student apparently abstracting for themselves, without, of
course, producing a label. For mathematicians, the label is the short form used to
refer to the effect of the abstracting process that is assumed to have taken place.
Such an act releases the possibility of reasoning with properties independently of
the nature of the objects under consideration. Attention shifts from objects and spe-
cific relationships to properties of objects.
5.5 Generalising But Not Abstracting
There is a wide range of tasks which invite the expressing of generality, often asso-
ciated with counting configurations or predicting terms of a sequence (Recorde,
1543; Mason et al., 2005; Küchemann, 2021). For example, in a hall with a large
number of tables that seat six people, how many people can be seated if there are a
specified number of rows each made up of some specified number of tables placed
end to end? Placed side by side? (Fig. 5.2)
108 J. Mason
Fig. 5.2 Showing chairs at

a table, and two ways of
forming rows of tables
Notice that for a very short period of time your attention gazed at the diagrams
in the figure. Discernment of two distinct diagrams and of components (the
individual tables) then released a sense of relationship as described previously in
the text, and latterly in the figure caption.
In these sorts of generalisation tasks, learners are invited to shift their attention
away from drawing all the tables and then counting, to discerning details amongst
which they can recognise a relationship between the number of chairs added when
a new table is adjoined, and expressing this as a property. Although learners
unfamiliar with using symbols to express generality might experience the effect as
‘abstract’, that is, as unfamiliar, it is not what mathematicians would call the result
of abstracting. Notice that the way the task is stated no particular number of desks
in a row or number of rows is given, in an attempt to direct attention away from
particular numbers and towards a generality (perceiving a property). It is anticipated
that those who feel the need to specialise using specific numbers will do so or can
be reminded to do so if they are stuck. This contrasts with a standard worksheet
approach in which specific numbers are used, intended as scaffolding to support
generalising, but actually directing attention towards the particular rather than the
general.
5.6 Poised Between Generalising and Abstracting
In this section, different ways of attending are highlighted in italics. Consider the
following task:
Two people are each thinking of their own number.
They are about to subtract the smaller of their numbers from the larger, when sud-
denly they are both instructed to add one to their number.
What difference will this make to their subtraction result?
Notice the difference between providing a range of instances of performing this
action with the associated subtractions, and this version of a task which relegates the
unimportant detail (the specific numbers) to the background. Attention is directed to
the effect of the action of adding 1 to both numbers, to recognising relationships.
The generality implied by not specifying the two starting numbers actually helps
thinking, by omitting the distraction caused by specifics, and by drawing attention
towards perceiving properties.
After discussion amongst learners, it is likely to emerge that the two instances of
‘1’ can be replaced by any number. Performing the same (additive) action on both
numbers makes no difference. This too is a generalisation, as well as an example of
the mathematical theme of invariance-in-the-midst-of-change. Different learners
may require different amounts of time manipulating confidence inspiring objects
(numbers) before the realisation (literally, making real through recognising and
getting-a-sense of relationships and perceiving these as instances of properties).
This is why blocking access to overly familiar objects (specific numbers) can
sometimes actually assist learners to recognise relationships as instances of
properties, which is a core shift in developing mathematical thinking.
The teacher may at some point think it worth using a label such as compensation
for this overall invariance, which in itself is a pedagogical-abstracting move, for it
is providing a label so that reference can be made to instances in the future,
supporting and promoting recognising relationships as instances of properties.
Labels for experiences make scientific advance possible, in line with the earlier
quote from Whitehead (1911): “To see what is general in what is particular and what
is permanent in what is transitory is the aim of scientific thought”.
The label also opens up the possibility of other ways to compensate while leav-
ing the result invariant, or perhaps changed in some predictable way. Similarly, my
drawing attention, through labelling, to the mathematical theme is an abstracting
move, providing a label for later reference back to this situation.
At another time, various variants can be considered, such as adding different
numbers or adding something to the larger and subtracting something else from the
smaller before the final subtraction or even replacing the final subtraction by
addition. These all focus attention on relationships, and invite thinking in generalities,
perceiving relationships as potential properties.
Switching to multiplying and dividing the two numbers by the same thing before
dividing, or even before dividing one by the other extends the domain of
compensation by making similar shifts of attention. Fruitful discussion and
realisation can emerge from seeking similarities and differences between the
properties associated with subtracting and with dividing, and also with adding and
with multiplying. Justification of conjectures involves reasoning on the basis of
previously articulated properties.
110 J. Mason
5.7 Abstracting as an Action
Breive (2022) reports observing two 5-year-old boys explore the concept of reflec-
tion symmetry using a doll’s pram. In the activity, the two boys first point to specific
familiar features of the pram which are symmetrically placed, then one of the boys’
attention gradually moves to the imagined and finally to grasping a general and
establishing symmetry as a new point of view. This illustrates the essential role of
gestures, bodily actions, and rhythm, in conjunction with spoken words, in the two
boys’ gradual process of encountering a general, challenging the traditional view of
abstraction as decontextualised higher order thinking. Abstraction, according to
Brieve, is not a matter of moving from the concrete to the abstract, but rather an
emergent and context-bound process, arising naturally from activity with confidence-
inspiring objects.
Here is an example of an abstracting action in a specifically mathematical domain.
5.8 Difference Divisible
Honsberger (1970, p.87) drew attention to the sequence 1, 3, 7, 13, 21, 31, 43, 57,
73, 91…, appearing in the middle of the following array (Fig. 5.3):
The sequence goes 1, 3, 7, 13, 21, 31, 43, 57, 73, 91, …, n2 – n + 1, …, based on
the triangular layout which generates the terms. This is generalisation, shifting from
specific relationships (for example, related to the positions of the square numbers in
the array) to a way to express each term. There is a shift to articulating a
comprehension of all terms being generated by a formula, which marks the shift in
how one is attending.
He noted that this sequence has the property that if you start at the second term
(3) and count along 3 terms the new term is also divisible by 3, as indeed are the
terms found by counting along a further 3, and then a further 3. Furthermore, if you
start at the third term (7) and count along 7, the new term is divisible by 7, as is the
Fig. 5.3 An array of

numbers
term found by counting along a further 7, and so on. What a world of exploration is
encompassed or signalled by those three little words and so on!
These are specific relationships. By stressing the relationship rather than the spe-
cific numbers, two conjectures emerge from asking whether these relationships
‘continue’:
For any positive integer n, tn divides t n + tn
For any positive integer n and λ, tn divides t n tn
The expression of generality has already converted a few specific relationships
into potential or conjectured general properties. There has been a shift in thinking,
in both what is being attended to and in how these are being attended to. Note that
many colleagues with whom I have used this task have struggled to express the
general properties, largely due to the unfamiliarity of using subscripted terms in
subscripts!
Shifting from specific relationships to a property of each term, and counting
along by multiples of that term, is again a generalisation, marked by the shift to a
sense of all. The urge to check may be great, including the somewhat empty
relationship when n is 1. In order to check some particular cases, so as to get a sense
of what the property is claiming, it may be necessary to generate some more terms,
perhaps by following the evident pattern of the layout or using the formula. If the
formula is itself confidence inspiring, then there may be a shift to expressing a
conjecture algebraically, and then verifying the divisibility property. In order to
justify the claim that the property always holds, it is necessary to find some way to
express the general term of the sequence, and this involves discerning details,
recognising relationships and treating them as properties, together with a shift in
the way you are attending, from concentration on specifics to a sense of ‘all’.
Having checked that the conjectures hold for this particular sequence, abstract-
ing provides a label for any sequence satisfying the same properties.
A sequence of numbers is said to be term-wise divisible if for every positive
integer n and every positive integer λ, tn divides t n tn .
A mathematical habit-of-mind (Cuoco et al., 1996) immediately raises the ques-
tion as to whether there are other sequences with the same property, and indeed
there are. For example, any geometric progression clearly satisfies the property. To
think of trying geometric progressions arises from familiarity with, and access to,
geometric progressions along with arithmetic progressions in one’s accessible
example space (Watson & Mason, 2005).
Close inspection of the original sequence reveals more: the difference between
the third and first terms is divisible by 2 as is t4 − t2 and t5 − t3; t5 − t2 is divisible by
3 as is t6 − t3 and t7 − t4; t6 − t2 is divisible by 4 and so on. Expressing these
relationships as instances of a property leads to the conjecture that for any positive
integer d, d is a factor of tn + d − tn. This property is readily verified in general for the
sequence generated by n2 – n + 1. If, while carrying out the algebra, attention is
primarily focused on how the reasoning develops rather than simply on the algebraic
manipulation, the possibility arises that the same reasoning will work for any
polynomial with integer coefficients. Again this is readily verified (Mason, 1990).
112 J. Mason
The mathematical abstracting action is to name this property for ease of future
reference and to declare it as the defining property of such sequences. Call such
sequences difference- divisible. The abstracting process brings with it the sense of a
collection of sequences all of which satisfy the difference-divisibility property, and
so it is natural to ask about actions on this new set of objects which preserve the
property. For example, term-wise addition and multiplication, scalar multiplication,
and composition of difference-divisible sequences remain difference-divisible, as
do first-differences. Such a plethora of properties (preservation of a property under
various actions) suggests that characterising all difference-divisible sequences
might be possible, and so it proves. Characterisation involves finding properties
which, unlike the global property involving divisibility, apply locally, allowing
explicit construction.
It turns out that all difference-divisible sequences are generated by polynomials
of the form for some d and integers ck (Mason, 1990).
n n n n

t n c0 c1 c2 lcm 1, 2 c3 lcm 1, 2, 3  cd lcm 1, 2,, d
1
2
3
d
5.9 Reflection
Abstracting is the action of isolating a collection of properties, formulating a label,

and declaring that any ‘thing’ that satisfies those properties is to be considered an
instance of that label. Van Oers & Poland (2007 p13–14) describe abstracting
similarly as a shift to “a point of view from which the concrete can be seen as
meaningfully related”. Gaining familiarity with a range of examples, developing
tools for constructing new examples from old, and characterising such examples
using other properties, is how accessible example spaces become enriched and is the
stuff of pure mathematics.
5.10 Defining and Specifying
Mathematicians have a habit of using the word define in two completely different
senses. One form is the familiar formulating of a definition of a concept, such as
function or circle, as has been illustrated as part of the process of abstracting. The
other form is actually a specification of a particular. Thus, I might specify the
function f to be (to denote for the moment; notice the definite article rather than the
indefinite article) f(x) = x2 + 1. To use the word define in this context, although
common, is misleading for novices, because it is not defining the concept of a
function, but specifying that for the time being f will denote a particular function.
Notice that comprehending the specification involves discerning and then relat-
ing two things, the letter f and the rule for evaluating it as a function. The
consequence is that whenever (locally) the letter f is used, it has the property that
f(x) = x2 + 1, where x is a placeholder and so can have various things substituted for
it, including itself. The experience of ‘taking this on board’ seems to me to involve
a shift in how I am attending to the symbol f, but to be subtly different from the shift
in attending which accompanies abstraction, since although the specified value can
be used in any context in which the symbol f appears, it is not abstracting a property,
but rather denoting it.
5.11 Other Instances of Abstracting in School Mathematics
What follows are some sample situations from school-aged mathematics which
involve the action of abstracting. I begin with what might be considered the more
obvious examples and proceed towards the more subtle.
5.12 Names
The act of naming something is an act of abstraction. It provides a label for ‘things
discerned as having the properties I am currently attending to’. What makes
mathematical abstracting distinctive is that the properties are made explicit, whereas
ordinary naming makes assumptions that everyone is attending to the same things
as necessary properties. Thus, I point to a tractor and say “tractor”, but my young
son appears to be attending to the end of my finger! What is rather amazing is that
children acquire grammar and vocabulary, often over-generalising at first, but then
narrowing down to common usage (Brown, 1973).
5.13 Geometry
5.13.1 Shape Naming
Much of early years spatial thinking is, unfortunately, taken up with the naming of
shapes, rather than actions which can be performed on shapes and which preserve
some set of properties.
Furthermore, most of the physical shapes made available to young children are
special instances of geometrical shapes that deserve more general mathematical
treatment. So when the word triangle is used largely in the context of a plastic or
wooden equilateral triangle, children are expected to experience what is really an
abstracting process of moving from properties to naming and defining. Where the
adult draws attention to the three vertices and three edges, properties are being iden-
tified, but when the adult is not attending to the regularity, children may not be
aware of the implicit generality. This aligns with the learning of vocabulary
114 J. Mason
generally, in which new words are used, sometimes with articulation of meaning and
sometimes not. But mathematically, it is important that the full range of properties
are brought to attention. For example, Sfard (2007 p597) found that her students
often distinguished between ‘ordinary’ triangles and extreme triangles, labelling the
latter as ‘sticks’, rather than ‘seeing them as’ triangles, and this parallels initial
reluctance to accept a square as an instance of a rectangle. In some contexts, naming
of sub-categories is taken on board easily, and in other contexts it is often resisted.
The vital but overlooked ingredient of abstracting is the sense of ‘all’ or ‘any’
which accompanies it. ‘Anything’, with the stated properties, qualifies. It is perhaps
largely within mathematics and science that it is necessary to be specifically
articulate about exactly which properties are required in order to qualify for the
label, so that reasoning on the basis of properties can take place.
Perimeter and Area
It is well known (Kouba et al., 1988; Dickson, 1989; Reinke, 2010) that learners
sometimes confuse perimeter and area when asked to calculate them. Usually
confusion arises because of the procedures invoked for calculating: it is easy to
confuse the role of ‘counting squares’ when figures are presented on squared paper
(sometimes you count inner squares, sometimes you count boundary squares,
inside, or outside). It is possible that young children have only the haziest notion of
what is being attended to by either concept. To make area and perimeter objects of
attention and hence to abstract them mathematically requires recognising
relationships and perceiving properties that are pretty sophisticated (which may be
why they don’t show up again until calculus) and probably out of reach for young
children. Even so, there is an element of abstracting in directing attention to the
distance around and the area encompassed by a shape drawing on intuitions based
on specific confidence-inspiring examples. Dealing with area and perimeter
separately, at different times may add to student confusion; one way to juxtapose
them is through the following task, based on an idea of Dina Tirosh & Pessia Tsamir
(Tirosh & Tsamir, 2020).
Figure 5.4 shows a shape in the middle cell. For each of the remaining cells, draw
a shape which has the properties indicated by the row and column headings, making
as few changes as possible to the central shape. Bring to articulation what you
become aware of as principles for tinkering with shapes so as to modify their area
and perimeter appropriately. These principles could be the starting point for full
abstraction of area and perimeter.
5.14 Constructions in Triangles
Various constructions in triangles (medians, angle-bisectors, altitudes, perpendicu-

lar- bisectors, cevians, …), and various special cases of polygons (regular, cyclic,
equi-angular, equi- edged, oppositely-parallel-edges, alternately paralleled, …) are
Fig. 5.4 An example of a more-or-less-grid for area and perimeter
labels for properties and so are examples of an abstracting action. Again the critical
element is the word any or all when stating that any object satisfying the property is
to be so labelled, for it is these properties, and these properties alone which can be
used in reasoning concerning, for example, that the three medians, three angle-
bisectors, three altitudes, and three perpendicular bisectors, are each coincident or
the conditions in which the three cevians are guaranteed to be coincident.
In geometrical reasoning, it is sometimes the case that deductions are made from
the property (points on an angle-bisector forming right-triangles with the edges of
the angle which are congruent), and sometimes the property is known to hold (a
point equidistant from two adjacent edges must lie on the angle-bisector). The
fluency and flexibility required in order to reason geometrically depend on the
abstracting process having been fully appreciated, especially the sense of ‘all’
which the abstraction encompasses.
5.15 Pythagoras
Appreciating and comprehending the Pythagorean relationship involves abstracting

as a consequence of reasoning rather than defining. Given any three positive numbers
a, b, c for which a2 + b2 = c2, there is a right-angled triangle with edges a, b and c,
and vice versa, given a right-angled triangle, the relationship holds. The adjective
Pythagorean applies to number triples and involves a further abstracting process.
Comprehension is extended when a second ‘any’ is introduced: placing similar
figures on the edges of a (any) right-angled triangle leads to the areas satisfying the
Pythagorean relationship.
116 J. Mason
5.16 Trig Functions
Each of the trigonometric functions is the result of an abstracting process, but it may
take time and multiple exposures to appreciate them fully. At first, any right-angled
triangle containing the specified angle (between 0° and 90°) provides six measures
of that angle, the sine, the cosine and the tangent, secant, cosecant and cotangent,
precisely and exclusively because ratios are preserved between similar triangles. It
is this invariance which provides the all, so that the definition makes sense. Later,
other definitions are encountered (power series, solutions of differential equations),
which require reasoning to justify the claim that they too classify or capture
equivalence and are indeed alternative characterisations.
5.17 Cosine and Sine Rules
These two trigonometric relationships which apply to triangles in Euclidean geom-

etry depend on the presence of all or any, in that they hold for any planar triangle.
Appreciating the scope of this any is necessary to comprehend the abstracting that
has taken place.
5.18 Numbers
5.18.1 Types of Numbers
Whole numbers, zero, and the integers, positive, negative, and zero are labelled and
used as nouns, usually without any reference to properties. It is only when real
numbers are being placed on a firmer foundation that it is deemed necessary to
return to integers and to isolate and articulate defining properties. The abstracting is
somehow deemed to have taken place already. This is the source of some confusion
for tertiary students for whom ‘facts’ that they have long been familiar with are
‘proved’ using lists of properties which appear ‘obvious’.
An interesting issue arises with fractions, introduced formally as the basis for
rational numbers. A fraction is usually defined as a pair consisting of an integer and
a positive integer.
2π 2
Consequently, neither nor are fractions, though of course as real num-
3π −3
bers they are equivalent to fractions and hence are representatives of rational num-
bers. Based on learners’ experiences prior to meeting rational numbers, fractions
might more usefully be defined as pairs of integers with the second being non-zero,
but even so, formal reasoning is required in order to check relations which underpin
equivalence of fractions and hence rational numbers are indeed equivalence
relations (note the extra abstraction with the label ‘equivalence relation’), and this
formality can be off putting. The formalities required to check that properties con-
tinue under equivalence require fluency and flexibility with the notions of equiva-
lence and with the arithmetic of fractions.
5.19 Symbolised Numbers: π, 2 and −1
Interestingly, learners seem to accept the symbol π as standing for some number,
even if they are misled into believing it to be 22/7, or more mysteriously, some
terminating decimal such as 3.1415927. Mathematically, there are actually two π’s
which happen to be the same: the ratio of the semi-circumference of a circle to the
radius, which is invariant under changes of radius, and the area of a circle divided
by the square of the radius, which is also invariant under change of radius. Thus, to
appreciate π involves appreciating two invariants, together with reasoning which
justifies the claim that the two invariants are actually the same. Of course, a good
way of developing comprehension of this is to contrast it with other more easily and
confidently manipulable shapes such as equilateral triangles, squares, and rectangles
with a specified ratio, because for these shapes the two invariants are different.
Might there be a collection of shapes which, like the circle, have the ratio of semi-
perimeter to radius and area to radius squared equal?
Learners seem to have slightly more difficulty dealing with numbers denoted by
surds, such as √2, perhaps because of the need to shift to properties. Surds challenge
the certainty-based confidence of whole numbers which are finite in nature and in
expression, while most real numbers have unknowable decimal digits. The symbol
√2 denotes a number with two properties: it is positive and its square is 2. That is
all that is known, and all that can be used. Although √2 ‘knows all of its decimal
digits,’ it cannot tell us what they all are. We can find out as finitely many as we wish
to know, but there will always be ignorance of what follows. Of course, the same is
true of π, though this does not seem to agitate learners in the same way.
In Mason (1980), I asked when a symbol is actually experienced as symbolic,
drawing attention to the way in which what begins as an unfamiliar sign, such as π
or √2, gradually over time and with experience, becomes confidence inspiring and
manipulable. In terms of attention, the sign is no longer simply something at which
to gaze, but is discerned from other signs, its relationships recognised, its properties
perceived, and reasoning can take place on the basis of its properties.
Experience with 2 , 3 , 3 2 , etc. opens the way for the introduction of −1
, whose only property is that its square is −1. Interestingly, it follows (reasoning on
the basis of properties) that − −1 has the same property. They are distinguished by
placing them on an Argand diagram.
Dedekind noticed that there is a problem when reasoning with surds and negative
numbers, because simply using the familiar properties for positive numbers leads to
contradiction:
118 J. Mason
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Dedekind raised the question of why it is the case that ab = a b when a and
b are non- negative. His answer was to define real numbers using what came to be
known as Dedekind cuts, which apply to non-negative a and b and leave as
problematic manipulations of surds of negative numbers. Eventually, this was
resolved by Riemann using what are now known as Riemann surfaces. Dedekind
undertook a process of abstraction in order to put decimal numbers on affirm
foundation.
5.20 GCD and LCM
Finding the greatest common divisor of two specified numbers involves a sequence
of mathematical actions. Shifting to thinking of the greatest common divisor of two
as-yet-unspecified numbers requires a subtle shift from recognising relationships
(divisibility, maximality) to perceiving properties as being instantiated. In order to
proceed mathematically, this act of generalisation is accompanied by formalisation,
in order to ascertain the properties that are needed. To reduce the words required,
the notation a|b is read as, and means that, the integer a divides into the integer b or
in other words that there exists an integer c such that ac = b. Then the properties of
the gcd of two positive integers are that
gcd(n, m) | n and gcd(n, m) | m, and for any h for which h|n and h|m, h | gcd(n, m).
gcd(n, n) = n; gcd(1, n) = 1.
These are acts of generalisation, listing properties. Mathematical abstracting
means reversing that action, choosing one or more properties as being ‘critical’ and
creating a definition:
Suppose g|n and g|m, and suppose further that for any h, h|a and h|b implies that h |
g. Then g is the gcd(a, b).
Mathematically, one then proves that the other properties are consequences of
the chosen properties.
The interested reader may wish to repeat the movement from recognising rela-
tionships to perceiving properties to abstracting (ready to reason on the basis of
properties) in the case of the lowest common multiple of two positive integers.
Abstracting involves a declaration. Notice that during the abstracting process,
the nature of the ground-set (positive integers) was omitted. This enables the
properties to be perceived as instantiated in other contexts and then the transfer of
all reasoned consequences of properties to the new context.
For example, consider gp(n, m) defined for any positive integer p as the greatest
power of p which divides both n and m. The function gp also has the properties of a
gcd, but only when p is a prime.
But abstracting is also an on-going process. Together, gcd and lcm satisfy the
following properties:
gcd(n, m) = gcd (m, n) and lcm(n, m) = lcm(m, n)
gcd(n, n) = n = lcm(n, n)
gcd(n, m)lcm(n, m) = nm
gcd(n, m) | n | lcm(n, m)
gcd(1, n) = 1; lcm(1, n) = n.
for any h for which h|n and h|m, h | gcd(n, m)
for any h for which n|h and m|h, lcm(n, m) | h.
Abstracting means isolating at least some of these properties and declaring that
any pair of function that satisfies those properties are a gcd/lcm pair.
Choosing a minimal set of properties from which the remainder can be deduced
is one domain of exploration. It exploits the shift of attention from properties as the
focus of attention, to properties as tools for reasoning. Being on the lookout for
other pairs of functions satisfying the same properties enriches the sense of what
gcd and lcm are about. For example,
Do the functions min(n, m) and max(n, m), defined on the integers, satisfy these
properties of gcd and lcm, respectively?
Do the functions f(n, m) = product of each of the primes which divide both n and m,
and g(n, m) = product of the primes which divide at least one of n and m satisfy
the properties?
Extending functions to three or more variables may involve extra properties.
Abstracting further by replacing ‘divides’ by some more general relationship,
perhaps with some specified properties, introduces connections to yet other
mathematical domains such as lattices and partially ordered sets.
5.21 Euclidean Algorithm
The Euclidean algorithm is the result of an abstracting process, in which, starting

with a pair of positive numbers, repeated actions of subtracting smaller from larger
until 0 is achieved, provides an output. Throughout, the current pair of numbers
preserve the property of having the same greatest common divisor. So labelling the
process, the action involves abstracting over the domain of pairs of positive integers
(which can be extended to rationals and to polynomials with integer coefficients).
Appreciating the ‘all’ is what contributes to comprehending the algorithm itself.
120 J. Mason
5.22 Zero and Infinity
5.22.1 Completed and Unfolding Infinities
One of the awkward features of a concept defined in terms of its negation is that it
is hard to escape a concept image of negation. Infinity is just such a concept. The
word infinity is usually associated with a process that ‘goes on forever’, and so is by
its very nature, uncompleted, incomplete, and incompletable. And yet, it is possible
to take a stance that somehow the process has been completed, perhaps by letting go
of unfolding-in-time, as in the names of irrationals as mentioned earlier. Different
stances are taken by different folk (Pajk, 1983; Hamming, 1989; Sierpinska, 1994;
Mamolo, 2010, 2017).
5.22.2 Empty-Sets and Zero
The introduction of zero to denote an empty place in a positional system of numer-

als seems to have come to the west from India in the eighth or ninth centuries,
though it may have been present in Central America as well. But it is an important
construct at the intersection of cosmologies, psychology, and philosophy: the notion
of the emergence of matter out of apparently nothing (the void), as in the ‘big
bang’, aligns with personality seen as layers protecting people from encountering
their essential emptiness, and in mathematics, the empty set.
I suggest that there is a very delicate shift of mathematical attention
required (Mason, 1989), in order to move from the sense of something being empty,
to that emptiness actually being a something, and hence a potential member of
another set. Thus, {}, which is usually denoted by ∅, involves discerning an
emptiness, treating it as a something, as a whole (potential object of gazing),
recognising a relationship between what has been discerned and non-emptiness,
providing a label, and then perceiving properties. Thus, ∅ leads to {{}} = {∅} and
so on into the emergence out of the void of something analogous to numbers
(Halmos, 1960). Properties include for any set A, A ∪ ∅ = ∅ ∪ A = A and
A∩ ∅ = ∅ ∩A=∅
Abstracting mathematically is the move from treating ∅ has a thing, to using the
properties to say that any set E with the property that for all sets A, A ∪ E = E ∪ A = A
and A ∩ E = E ∩ A = E, is the empty set.
This is actually a theorem to be justified with reasoning:
Suppose for all sets A, A ∪ E = E ∪ A = A and A ∩ E = E ∩ A = E
Then in particular, these properties must hold when A = ∅
Consequently, ∅ ∪ E = E ∪ ∅ = ∅ and so E = ∅
Alternatively,
E E E. / /
In the face of alternative reasoning, the question arises as to whether both proper-
ties are required or whether each can be deduced from the other. In other words, is
it possible for a set to satisfy either property but not the other? Mathematical explo-
ration of minimal axioms (defining properties) usually follows.
5.22.3 Wholeness of One
Wholeness, or oneness, seems at first to be entirely natural and unproblematic. Yet

it involves a choice, a decision to discern difference, perhaps even boundary, in
order to include while at the same time excluding. As you read, you (mostly) ignore
the ambient temperature, the sensation of your body as you sit or stand, your
heartbeat, what you had for breakfast, and so on. What you are attending to has an
innate sense of wholeness. It is the whole of your attention.
Being able to gaze, to hold a whole without proceeding to make further distinc-
tions and so engage in an analytic or decomposing programme, is remarkably dif-
ficult. The temptation of the human organism to enact any available actions is very
great. And yet it is through gazing, through attending to form rather than function,
through holding wholes, that insight comes. It is through gazing that access to cre-
ative energy is gained. For me, this is the point of linkage between mathematical
thinking and other forms of creative arts, including insight that might be classified as
spiritual or ‘as coming from somewhere else’. It turns out that many people, amongst
them Sylvanus Thompson (1917 p106–109) have had similar thoughts.
Contemplation of moments of insight opens up a sense of wholeness, which,
through being distinguished from multiplicity, and through recognition of what used
to be known as the middle-aged stance that ‘everything is connected’, engages an on-
going abstracting of ecological-spiritual- mathematical awareness of the unity and
interconnectedness of everything, while at the same time providing a setting for dis-
cerning detail, recognising other relationships and perceiving properties.
If you have ever had the experience of looking but not seeing, such as looking in
the fridge for something but not seeing it as being present, you know the effect of a
limited wholeness and how it blocks out other details and relationships. So the
analytic mode is capable of contributing to an increasing rich sense of wholeness, as
long as it does not become its own exclusive world. Perceiving properties and
reasoning on the basis of properties can serve to enrich one’s sense of wholeness,
one’s subsequent gazing, but by becoming a wholeness of its own, it can also block
out that richness.
5.23 Conclusions
Discerning different ways of attending to mathematical constructs enriches possibili-

ties for informing both teaching and learning, not simply by refining analysis of experi-
ence, but by providing a practical vocabulary for directing attention.
122 J. Mason
A process of mathematical abstracting takes place throughout mathematics, at all

ages. It is not confined to the ‘higher mathematics’ of tertiary institutions. Discerning
abstracting as a shift in how someone is attending, discerning what is stressed and
what ignored, and emphasising the properties required in order to justify use of a
label arising from a definition, could inform teacher practice by providing a useful
way of undertaking and displaying the abstracting.
Distinguishing between generalising and abstracting could go a long way to
improve communication between teacher and learners, because they involve
different shifts not only in what is attended to, but how. Generalising involves a shift
of attention from specific relationships in a particular situation, to focusing simply
on properties. It seems so natural to those familiar with mathematical thinking but
can be mysterious for novices. Abstracting involves a further shift in which attention
is not on the objects in a situation, but the general properties which have been
isolated and subsumed under some defining label. Again, the expert barely notices
the shift, while learners may be mystified when it is done quickly and implicitly.
Mathematical definitions come in two types, the naming of an object as some-
thing satisfying a list of properties, and, unhelpfully, temporarily specifying a par-
ticular object within a domain. Pedagogically, it makes sense to distinguish these by
using specify for the act of specifying. Pedagogic support for shifting the way learn-
ers are attending to the more mathematically productive generalising and abstract-
ing requires increasingly complex appreciation of the for all feature of properties.
This means enriching the space of accessible examples and associated construction
tools so that all (or any, each, and even a) encompass a wide range of instances for
learners. Where characterisation is possible, then all is actually articulated in terms
of the local properties which are equivalent to the original global properties on
which the definition of the abstraction is based.
Knowing when something is worth naming, or in other words, when a distinction
is worth making, is not trivial. Locally, it may ease articulating reasoning for the
writer, but it may also introduce a hurdle for the reader who has not yet internalised
the concept being labelled; globally, it may introduce yet more burden on teachers,
by, for example, introducing distinctions and associated pedagogical actions which
may overcomplicate teacher attention, leading to frustration.
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Chapter 6
Toward a Systems Theory Approach
to Mathematics Education
Steven Watson
6.1 Introduction
This chapter presents a systems approach to thinking about mathematics education.

Little attention has been paid to systems theory in mathematics education, although
there has been some interest in the forebears of contemporary systems theory.
Notably, Ernst von Glasersfeld’s (1995) radical constructivism draws on earlier ren-
ditions of systems theory and second-order cybernetics; Davis and Simmt (2003)
draw on complexity theory and present the mathematics classroom as a complex
adaptive system, and Proulx and Simmt (2013) relate systems theory to enactivism.
However, systems theory has itself developed considerably since Bertalanffy (1968)
proposed a general systems theory of open systems. Here, I will present those devel-
opments and begin to bring the ideas of systems theory to mathematics education.
While this may appear to have commonality with postmodern theory, and the prob-
lem of the loss of grand narrative, it is resolutely modern, but as a modern critique
of modernity.
I will draw upon the work of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann
(1927–1998) who developed a systems theory of society. Luhmann was a prolific
author; he is notable for his public intellectual rivalry with the Frankfurt School
philosopher Jurgen Habermas and his difficult and sometimes impenetrable writing.
However, he is recognized in many quarters as one of the most significant social
theorists of the latter half of the twentieth century but is quite often misunderstood
and misrepresented (see Borch, 2011). Even amongst sociologists of the anglo-
phone world, little attention is given to his work, but his influence in northern
Europe is considerable and across a range of disciplines. This is often attributed to
the fact that Luhmann wrote in German, and there has been something of a lag
S. Watson (*)
Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
e-mail: sw10014@cam.ac.uk
126 S. Watson
before his work was translated into English. Even translated into English his writing
style is difficult, and systems theory itself is challenging as it marks a departure
from the traditions of post-Enlightenment and humanist thinking.
In what follows, I will set out some of the key ideas presented in Luhmann’s
systems theory and then begin to consider mathematics education from this per-
spective. In the spirit of the title of this book as presenting philosophy of mathemat-
ics education works-in-progress, this marks the beginning of consideration of a
systems perspective on mathematics education.
It is important to address the question, What issues in mathematics education
does systems theory address? While this chapter will unfold some propositions as I
introduce systems theory, the central issue is the possibility of the observation of
mathematics education as an entity. In other words, scholars and practitioners who
are active in mathematics education are increasingly asking about the nature of
mathematics education as a whole. There is an imperative for self-observation.
Within the field of mathematics education, there has been increasing interest in the
self-observation of mathematics education, for example, from the perspective of
history (see, for example, Howson, 1982; Kilpatrick, 2014; Inglis & Foster, 2018)
and also theoretically (Sriraman & English, 2010). Within the ‘unity’ of mathemat-
ics education, there is also much difference: differences between theory and prac-
tice as well as approaches to practice and approaches to research, with positions
often presented as polarized and intractable, within the field and in the media
(Watson, 2020a; Watson & Barnes, 2021). Overall, however, mathematics educa-
tion takes place in a complex world, where knowledge appears to be increasingly
uncertain and is sometimes contradictory; information proliferates within the media
and is often conflicting and even ‘fake’. I argue systems theory offers an approach
to understanding this complexity.
6.2 Systems Theory
Systems, as functional conglomerations of elements, have been conceptualized

since at least classic antiquity (Bertalanffy, 1972). However, in the last 200 years,
the idea of a system has taken on a new significance. This development has run in
parallel with notions of complexity and emergence. Human beings increasingly
encounter and also become part of complex and fluid social and technological enti-
ties. Deleuze and Guattari described such entities as assemblages (Deleuze &
Guattari, 1987). Here, I will refer to such emergent and dynamic entities as systems.
Mathematics education, a mathematics education research paradigm, a class-
room (see Davis & Simmt, 2003), a teacher or learner’s cognition can all be thought
of as systems. All are entities consisting of elements and processes and each can
distinguish itself from its environments. All subsystems can see themselves as
within the totality of mathematics education, yet within that totality, that unity, there
is difference: paradigmatic differences in scholarship and research, differences
between theory and practice and differences in values, for example.
6 Toward a Systems Theory Approach to Mathematics Education 127
Traditionally, and going back to antiquity, the distinction has been made between
‘whole’ and ‘parts’ in the analysis of the world (Luhmann, 1995). Mathematics
education in this sense represents an aggregation of, say, policy, policymakers, prac-
tice, teachers and learners, and research and researchers, etc. However, the unity of
the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In other words, mathematics education,
in totality, has overall characteristics that cannot be identified within the elements
that contribute to it. The totality is not simply an aggregation of all its elements. To
address the limitations of the whole-and-part distinction, systems theory makes a
distinction between system and environment in order to understand the relationship
between the unity of a totality, such as mathematics education, and its elements.
This apparently simple change also results in some profound changes in epistemol-
ogy and ontology.
The distinction between system and environment is not concerned with the func-
tion of the system alone, but with how the system functions in relation to its environ-
ment. It is how that system distinguishes itself from its environment (Luhmann,
1995). It is the system itself that distinguishes itself from its environment through
self-reference, but self-reference in relation to its environment. The part/whole
characterization is replaced by the idea of system differentiation, systems are dif-
ferentiated from their environments and within systems, subsystems differentiate
themselves, e.g., research and practice. The environment of each subsystem includes
other subsystems within that system and the environment beyond that system.
The environment of the mathematics classroom includes education policy mak-
ing, knowledge generated through mathematics education research, individual
learners, the teacher, as well as the mass media and social media. Mathematics
education is, through policy, practice and scholarship in a constant process of defin-
ing itself in relation to environmental prompts. Its overall purpose, its function, is
not controversial, in that mathematics education intends to develop the mathemati-
cal knowledge and mathematical capabilities of learners. How it does that is subject
to internal (and external) debate, contested approaches, organizational and institu-
tional policy and practices, and appeals to knowledge, values, and morality.
A further distinction is made between open and closed systems. A closed system
is a limiting case where notionally no material or energy crosses the boundary
between system and environment (Luhmann, 1995). All ‘real’ systems are open,
they are responsive to the environment that they are distinguished from. Real sys-
tems also have a boundary with their environment, for example, a cell has a mem-
brane yet remains open. This apparent contradiction between openness and closure
in living systems was addressed by Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana and later
with Francisco Varela (Maturana & Varela, 1980). They suggested that living sys-
tems were operationally closed and that although cell membranes are permeable
and therefore open, the cell can be considered to be closed operationally. It responds
to its environment through its internal biochemical operations, those operations
recursively create the distinction between system and environment (the membrane).
They termed this autopoiesis as the self-referential operational closure of a system.
Self-reference is important since the consequence of autopoiesis is that any
128 S. Watson
experience of the environment is entirely constructed by the system internally. The

system iteratively responds to a complex and unknowable world.
Maturana and Varela’s work was principally based on living systems, but
Luhmann wanted to use autopoiesis in the context of consciousness and society (i.e.
in psychic and social systems). To do this, he generalized Maturana and Varela’s
theory of autopoiesis by de-temporalizing and de-ontologizing the elements of a
system. For Maturana and Varela, elements of living systems involve relatively sta-
ble chemical molecules which are replaced from time to time. Luhmann argued that
(1) the replacement of stable molecules is a momentary event and therefore in de-
temporalized terms elements are not dependent on temporal references beyond the
system itself and (2) elements are internally differentiated by the system, they are
not pre-given and are constituted by the system they are given to. Elements of a
system do not have an ontology beyond that designated by the system. The move
then is to a more general theory of autopoiesis.
[I]f we abstract from life and define autopoiesis as a general form of system building using
self-referential closure, we would have to admit that there are non-living autopoietic sys-
tems, different modes of autopoietic reproduction, and general principles of autopoietic
organization which materialize as life, but also in other modes of circularity and self- repro-
duction. In other words, if we find non-living autopoietic systems in our world, then and
only then will we need a truly general theory of autopoiesis which carefully avoids refer-
ences which hold true only for living systems. (Luhmann, 1986, p. 172)
Luhmann translated the idea of self-referential, operationally closed, autopoietic

systems to society and social systems. He distinguishes between machines, organic
and neurophysiological systems (cells, nervous systems, immune systems etc.) and
systems “constituted by the production and processing of meaning” (Luhmann,
1995, p. 37) i.e. social systems and psychic systems (consciousness) (see Fig. 6.1).
In this chapter, I will focus on the social and psychic systems constituted on a phe-
nomenological interpretation of the idea of meaning.
Social and psychic systems can only experience their environment through
meaning (see Luhmann, 1995, p. 102). Similarly physical, chemical, and organic
use physical forms and processes to experience the environment. This probably
explains why neurophysiological approaches appear only to have limited explana-
tory power in relation to cognition. The individual cognitive system from the per-
spective of systems theory is a self-referential system constituted on meaning,
clearly neurophysiology is necessary for consciousness, but consciousness by its
very definition is abstracted from the physical.
What then distinguishes social and psychic systems from other systems is that
the medium (the elements of these systems) that constitutes both is meaning, and
Fig. 6.1 The structure of autopoietic systems. (Adapted from Luhmann, 1995)
this is central to language and communication. The explanation for this lies with a
phenomenological rather than the hermeneutic sense of meaning used by Luhmann.
Luhmann defines meaning as the “horizon” of possibilities that is virtually present in every
one of its actualizations. As the difference between the possible and the actual, meaning
itself is a category “without difference” (differenzlos), which designates the medium
through which social systems process world-complexity. (Foreword by Eva Knodt in
Luhmann, 1995, p. xiii)
Meaning, in Luhmann’s terms, means consciousness and communication are

constituted on the difference between actual and possible. This concretizes the
‘actual’ in thought and language while permitting a horizon of possibility. This ulti-
mately is a means through which the complexity of the environment is reduced by
the operations of consciousness (cognition) and of social systems.
Luhmann, rather controversially, characterizes society as a social system of com-
munication a totality of communication. That is rather than one of human beings
and/or their actions. This while the consequence of such theorization is not so – sug-
gests to some, denial of agency or humanity even. Luhmann argues that it is only
through communication that society is created, as we shall see that conscious sys-
tems constitute the environment of the social system of society and vice versa.
Therefore, action perturbates or stimulates conscious systems which in turn stimu-
late the system of society. Some action is communicative, of course, but many
actions are not communicative and are external to society (detailed justification for
this can be found in Luhmann, 1995, 2013a, for example).
In the later phases of developing systems theory, Luhmann was influenced by
British mathematician George Spencer Brown (Watson, 2020b) and his Laws of
Form (Spencer Brown, 1969). This represents a further abstraction of autopoiesis,
although Spencer Brown developed Laws of Form sometime before Maturana and
Varela. Laws of Form offers a psychological, mathematical, and philosophical
development of a distinction as ‘the mark’ between system and environment, its
unity in difference, its paradoxical nature, and self-referentially recursive nature
(Watson, 2020b).
The most profound consequence is that the foundation of consciousness, the
psychic system, is the capacity to make a distinction, in the abstract, between one
thing and another. Complex phenomena emerge from the recursive distinction of
different patterns of distinction (think here of the generation of fractal patterns of
repetition and emergence in Mandelbrot sets). There is limited space here to go into
the recursive basis of complex patterns through the process of re-entry, where a
simple distinction, the identification of an ‘object’, leads to further distinctions
within that distinction. The distinction re-enters itself (see Watson, 2020b).
Distinction is also important in understanding the nature of information and
communication in systems theory. Luhmann follows Gregory Bateson’s (1972)
characterization of information, as a difference that makes a difference. What marks
something out as information is its difference from other things. Information is in
itself a distinction, but is fleeting and momentary, although it can be recorded as an
event. Luhmann’s theory of communication involves a distinction between
130 S. Watson
information and utterance, in a similar way to recognizing a pattern of sound against

a background of noise. Language provides the medium of communication (which is
in itself a form in the medium of meaning). The process of communication involves
utterance and selection of information, the receiver independently selects informa-
tion from the utterance, this is less than likely to be the same selection that is made
by the sender. It is a corollary of the general theory of autopoietic systems that com-
munication refers only to previous communication.
Again, in a somewhat unorthodox move, Luhmann puts forward the idea that it
is not people who communicate, it is communications that communicate (Luhmann,
1995). Again, this can cause a jolt and shudder on the grounds of denial of human
agency. However, the fact that humans experience, perceive, make sense and con-
struct meaning, and articulate a selection of that through language, which is itself an
evolving recursion, indicates the plausibility of society and social systems as an
autopoietic system of communication.
Systems theory draws on evolutionary theory and has an important role in
explaining the improbability of system differentiation as a result of variation, selec-
tion, and stabilization (Luhmann, 2013b). The implication of both evolutionary
theory and systems theory is the proliferation and selection of distinctions, as well
as the importance of both the inseparability and distinctness of psychic and social
systems of consciousness and communication and language.
From an evolutionary perspective, social systems and psychic systems have
developed concurrently, one is inconceivable without the other. They are, in the
terminology of Luhmann, structurally coupled, a means by which systems regulate
relations with their environment (Luhmann, 1995). Structure is employed by an
autopoietic system to ‘simplify’ its relationship with its environment. For example,
the evolutionary development of muscles and a skeleton is a structural development
to allow movement in the context of gravitational forces. Another example is the
way in which the brain is structurally coupled to the environment through the eye
and ear; this structural coupling reduces what can be seen and what can be heard.
Structural coupling maintains the boundary between system and environment but
does not influence the system’s autopoiesis.
Psychic and social systems are uniquely constituted in the medium of phenom-
enological meaning and depend on structural coupling. The structural features of
spoken and written language reduce environmental complexity and form the basis
of structural coupling between psychic and social systems.
... language excludes a lot in order to include very little, and that it can become complex
only for this reason. If we begin with spoken language, we see that noises are excluded
except for those few highly articulated noises that can function as language. Even small
variations and slight shifts, or the replacement of one sound by another make communica-
tion impossible and irritate consciousness. [...] And the same is true of writing, only very
few standardized symbols are suitable for writing, and everything else that can be seen is
simply out of the question. Structural coupling is a highly selective form that uses relatively
simple patterns. (Luhmann, 2013a, p. 87)
It is with a limited number of letters, a sophisticated alphabetic phonetic writing

system, some standardized pitches and acoustic signs that with which we can
recreate complexity, and at the same time as reducing environmental complexity.

The implication of this is that society is only coupled with the physical world via
consciousness. Luhmann argues “that there is no physical, chemical, or purely bio-
logical effects that influence social communication” (Luhmann, 2013a, p. 87). As
such, everything passes through the limits of language which forms the basis of
structural coupling between psychic systems and the social.
With this brief introduction to systems theory, it is possible to examine mathe-
matics education, if only to a preliminary extent.
6.3 What Kind of System Is Mathematics Education?
I will begin by presenting mathematics education as a social system of society, a

system of communication, specifically a functional system. Coupled to mathemat-
ics education, as well as the consciousness (i.e., psychic systems) of those involved
in mathematics education, are other functional subsystems of society. These include,
for example, the political system, the legal system, the economic system, the educa-
tion system, the system of science (as the general system of knowledge production),
and mass and social media.
6.4 The System of Society and Education
The evolution of society is a concomitant feature of the evolution of consciousness,

and for human beings, the evolution of language and communication allows the
possibility of forms of structural coordination that improve the likelihood of sur-
vival of individual ‘consciousnesses’. This is an assumption central to a systems
theory of societal differentiation (Luhmann, 1995, 2013a, b, c). Coordination takes
place through the differentiation of society by recursive distinction. Early societal
differentiation involved family, kinship, and tribes, which Luhmann characterizes as
segmentary society. This allowed the potential for coordination between families
who in smaller units were engaged in survival. In parts of the world, tribal structures
evolved and with the emergence of eminent families, this centre-periphery differen-
tiation gave way to empires and civilizations, through which and with the invention
of writing, were to give way to stratified differentiation, with the differentiation of
the nobility from commoner. In Europe, stratification was the predominant mode of
differentiation through the Middle Ages and continued to be the dominant mode of
differentiation of society until a functional differentiation of society emerged as
dominant in Europe from about the eighteenth century (Luhmann, 2013b, c).
Before elaborating on functional differentiation, it is important to provide some
caveats and conditions with which Luhmann presents the four modes of differentia-
tion: segmentary, centre- periphery, stratified, functional. (1) They are not indica-
tions of society’s epochs; (2) societal differentiation is not limited to these forms; these,
132 S. Watson
Luhmann argues, are the key types of differentiation in the history of society, (3)
different types of differentiation can exist at the same time, e.g. families continue to
exist in contemporary functionally differentiated society, (4) the internal differentia-
tion of society reflects an increasing complexity with which the world can be
described and experienced, and (5) societal differentiation follows evolutionary
principles of variation and selection. Also, Luhmann stresses the improbability of
such structures on the basis of evolution:
Evolution theory shifts the problem [of the “improbability of structural coordination’] to
time and explains how it is possible that ever more demanding and ever more improbable
structures develop and function as normal. (Luhmann, 2013b, pp. 251–252)
Functional differentiation developed from stratification with the appearance of

specialized functions in society and through the division of labour. There are vari-
ous aspects that mark the transformation from stratified society to functionally dif-
ferentiated society from the late Middle Ages and into early modernity. These
include the growth of international trade, surplus money, and a debt crisis in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The economy ‘learned’ to perpetuate itself through
prices and became independent of the nobility.
What is important is that at some point or other, the recursivity of autopoietic reproduction
began to take hold and achieved closure, after which only politics counted for politics, only
art for art, only aptitude and willingness to learn for education, only capital and profit for
the economy, and the corresponding intrasocietal environments—which included stratifica-
tion—were now seen only as irritating noise, as disturbances or opportunities. (Luhmann,
2013c, p. 66)
I am not going to expound here on the differentiation of each functional system

from the Middle Ages, of politics, economy, law, media, religion, art, etc. (for an
elaboration, see Luhmann, 2013c, pp. 65–86). Although, it is important to consider
the dynamics of this ‘outdifferentiation’, the process through which functional sys-
tems differentiate from stratified society. Politics emerged from political rivalry in
stratified societies, which by the mid-seventeenth century, had given way to a
nascent form of democracy and then to ideas of the sovereign state, as well as the
emergence of a legal system.
As part and parcel of this movement, education progressively switched from being primar-
ily achieved through mere socialization to becoming more systemically organized and dif-
ferentiated from the rest of society. What emerged then across Europe was a sort of ‘popular
religious education’ (Luhmann, 2013c, p. 219) whose contents were still aligned with dog-
matic teachings (Luhmann & Schorr, 2000, pp. 74–75) and differentiated according to rank
and status. The notion that schools and families operate as sites for the systematic, inten-
tional and still very religious education of the population became generalized around the
sixteenth century in Europe. (Mangez & Vanden Broeck, 2020, p. 679)
Replacing the ‘commoner’ of stratified feudal society was an increasingly eco-

nomic active working class and middle class, which allowed education to escape the
authority of religion, i.e. the church. Education differentiates from the system of
religion in the eighteenth century (Luhmann & Schorr, 2000). The impact of the
differentiation of education is given little attention in educational research. However,
Luhmann and Shorr articulate the changes in the organization of society and the
consequences of the functional differentiation of society.
A young person grows up in his own family without problem and has barely any transition
when he enters life in the society in the same degree that his radius of action and his circle
of friends expand. By being forced to attend school, however, he is confronted for the first
time and suddenly with a society that is no longer negotiated by the family. But the school,
being a special institution of a function system, is not a representative sample of societal
life; it socializes for the school, not the society. The fact that the first contact with society
apart from the family takes on precisely this form - one can think of it as a concentration of
people of the same age in a relatively big interaction system - rather than another form, must
have deep-reaching repercussions on the cognitive and motivational resources of societal
life. And it is clearly impossible to level out this socialization-related imbalance through
school curricula, social studies, sexual education, etc. (Luhmann & Schorr, 2000, p. 31)
Hannah Arendt made some similar reflections upon education in the United
States in her 1954 essay, The crisis of education, especially the artificiality of the
separation of childhood and youth from the adult world (Arendt, 1977). However, I
agree with Luhmann and Schorr that this macroscopic view of education, its role
and function in society, and the experience of individuals is given little attention in
educational studies. What comes to the fore is the investigation of educational pro-
cesses, both cognitive and social, within the system of education and the relation-
ship between politics and education (i.e. policy making). A blind spot occurs as a
result of seeing ‘education’ as a seamless component of society rather than its dif-
ference in the unity of the communications system of society. Assumptions can be
made that if education is ‘successful’ in its mission, then it must be of benefit to
society. This denies the complexity presented by functionally differentiated systems
of society and points to some considerable questions for the sociology of education
(and sociology of mathematics education). Too often do these fields become
entrenched in moral rather than analytic accounts of society. Morality is too contin-
gent to be the basis for any scientific endeavour.
Mathematics education is a subsystem of the social system of education, the
overarching theme within education is the construct of the educability of the indi-
vidual. In mathematics education, we are concerned with a particular set of knowl-
edge, mathematical knowledge. Before concluding this chapter, it is necessary to
give some attention to mathematics as a system of communication and which is
closely connected to the system of science as the functional system of knowledge
production.
6.5 The System of Mathematics
Through practices and programmes of empirical and theoretical work, science is

engaged in a process of the production of knowledge – the identification of validity
and the rejection of invalid claims. This permits a range of possibilities for science
with a plurality of research approaches, extensive communication, and peer
134 S. Watson
evaluation of the knowledge produced. The differentiation of science from society

accelerated during the Enlightenment as human reason challenged religiously
authorized determinations of what knowledge was. Mathematics has further speci-
ficity within a system of society; mathematical knowledge is generated through
reasoning processes and proof rather than the more general empiricism of science.
It is useful at this point to think about mathematics as a subsystem of science, but it
is possible that there is a different systemic relationship with science. It could be
argued that mathematics is a distinct system of communication that is structurally
coupled with science. Whatever the relationship, I agree with Mehrtens, one of the
few systems theorists of mathematics: “‘Mathematics’ means here the social system
of the discipline with its central function of producing and disseminating knowl-
edge of a specific character” (Mehrtens, 1993, p. 220). Mehrtens argues, based on
an analysis of mathematics in Germany, that mathematics becomes functionally
differentiated in the nineteenth century. He presents mathematics as a knowledge-
producing social system like the system of science and that it characterizes itself
similarly through the specificities of its knowledge with a core of 'pure' mathemat-
ics. Another important feature is the compelling nature of mathematical argument
(Mehrtens, 1993).
Mathematical knowledge is not simply a “parade of syntactic variations,” a set of “struc-
tural transformations,” or “concatenations of pure form.” [...] Mathematical forms and
objects come to be seen as sensibilities, collective formations, and world views. The foun-
dations of mathematics are not located in logic or systems of axioms but rather in social life.
Mathematical forms or objects embody math worlds. They are produced in and by math
worlds. It is, in the end, math worlds, not individual mathematicians, that manufacture
mathematics. (cf. Becker, 1982) (Restivo, 1993, p. 250)
Like Mehrtens, Restivo is emphasizing the systemic and communicative nature

of mathematics as an autopoietic system.
6.6 Toward a System Theory Approach

to Mathematics Education
This section poses the question, What kind of system is mathematics education? So
far in what I have presented, mathematics education can be seen as an autopoietic
social system of communication. Through its own internal operations and pro-
grammes, it responds to its environment and maintains its own operations and lim-
its. While it is mathematics education that defines, in an on-going way, what
mathematics education is, this is not as autonomous as one might first conclude, the
self-referentiality is entirely in response to an environment that the system can only
make sense of through its own operations.
Here, like the argument set out for the system of mathematics, I will treat math-
ematics education as a subsystem of education. As a coda, and before setting out a
provisional research agenda for systems theory in and of mathematics education, I
want to consider the nature of mathematics education as a functional system of

communication in society.
A social system of communication is constituted on a phenomenological inter-
pretation of meaning – meaning as the difference between actual and possible. This
permits the actualization of experience but with a horizon of possibility – what is
does not deny the possibility of it being anything else. The mathematics classroom
is an important interactive system in the production of meaning, as it is in the class-
room that conscious systems (the individual psychic systems of teacher and student/
pupil/ adult learner) encounter and are compelled to engage with mathematical
knowledge. Psychic systems are in a constant process of making sense of environ-
mental stimuli. The social system of mathematics education in the context of class-
room interactions prompts communication. The process of experiencing,
meaning-making and communication stimulate each other. However, there are par-
ticular sets of purposes, assumptions, and roles in the mathematics classroom, these
include the purpose of developing learners’ mathematical knowledge and capabil-
ity, there is the assumption of (mathematical) educability and development, and the
teacher is tasked with instruction and facilitation and the learner to learn
(mathematics).
There is the important task of determining what knowledge is within the class-
room context. The curriculum is an articulation of this knowledge. While the math-
ematics curriculum is an expression of the system of mathematics, it is distinct. Its
development and expression reflect a range of influences from within mathematics
education but are influenced by the system’s environment. Environmental influ-
ences might include politics, as the process of policy making, the needs of the busi-
nesses and the economic system, as well as science (including educational research
that I will discuss shortly) and mathematics. Luhmann and Schorr (2000) argue that
the curriculum is strongly influenced by the contingency formula of educability, in
other words what kinds of knowledge ‘stick’. Contingency formulae are a means by
which functional systems like education can deal with environmental complexity,
they have their historical origins within religion but have continued as functionally
equivalent into modern functionally differentiated system of education.
An awareness of contingency, which accepts “this or also that” for a given condition is a
form of generalization and for that reason necessitates a re-specification; because one can-
not live with the notion of the equal possibility of anything and everything. (Luhmann &
Schorr, 2000, p. 66)
The potential to be educated or educability is a key contingency formula within

education, it deals with uncertainty by offering a process that can be actualized in
the current context and allowing a surplus of possibility, albeit with somewhat pre-
scribed possibilities set by historical practices. The mathematics classroom as a
system of interaction within education has played a key role in defining and re-
defining what mathematics education is and what it isn’t. Cuban (1993, 2009) has
illustrated this point from the perspective of the historical analysis of classrooms in
the United States and points to the continuity and contingency that exists over time.
He also shows the limitations and frequent failure of attempts at teaching reforms in
136 S. Watson
the light of the continuity of practice. This can be explained also by considering the
contingency formula of educability and the historical continuity of educational
practice.
While education became functionally differentiated in the eighteenth century, it
was not until the twentieth century that there was a developed system of education
research or mathematics education research. With the increasing number of partici-
pants in state education, the need to develop assessment and evaluate policy
prompted (mathematics) education to reflect upon itself (see Howson, 2009;
Kilpatrick, 2014; Inglis & Foster, 2018). Mathematics education, increasingly pro-
fessionally staffed and higher education based, is ‘coupled’ with science through
the use of theory and methodology. It is connected to but distinct from science, what
distinguishes and closely integrates mathematics education research with the sys-
tem of mathematics education is the object of research and that is mathematics
education. While traditions of educational assessment and evaluation have been
influential on educational research, mathematics education has drawn on psychol-
ogy and mathematics, now there is a plurality of paradigms and perspectives. The
most significant of these is the distinction between mathematics education research
that is concerned with cognitive processes and research that is concerned with social
perspectives. The former follows traditions of psychological research and in par-
ticular experimental approaches, the latter draws on social theory and approaches to
sociological research in education more generally. The social turn in mathematics
education (Lerman, 2000) employs a range of qualitative methods with theoretical
perspectives that might draw on the sociocultural psychology of Vygotsky or in a
more macroscopic sociology of mathematics education using Marx’s theory of capi-
talist society.
The plurality within the system of mathematics education not only draws across
the division of educational research and educational practice but also within alterna-
tive traditions and paradigms of research. Certainly, studies of mathematical cogni-
tion and sociocultural studies of mathematics education are distinct, and it seems
like there is no language that would allow a synthesis between the two. However,
systems theory offers the possibility of a meta-theory of consciousness and com-
munication that although it may not permit an integration it provides an approach
for the meta-analysis of these components within a totality of mathematics educa-
tion and within the totality of society. It would seem likely that this is one possible
way forward and a meta- language of systems addresses a fundamental problem in
the imperative for society and its systems to be able to observe themselves. As
William Rasch explains in the introduction of a collection of essays by Luhmann on
theories of distinction, the challenge facing scholarship in general in late modernity:
… the immanent, partial, and severed world, the posited world gradually achieves auton-
omy and takes center stage. What was once “the whole” or the nature of “all things” that
could be seized in an instant and for all time as a totality now becomes an immanent field
of observations, descriptions, and communications, a “totality of facts,” as Wittgenstein
wrote […] that must contend with the uncomfortable situation that any observation of a fact
is itself a fact that can be observed. The whole that is modernity is the whole that strains to
see itself and thus a whole that forever divides itself with every observation into more and
more “facts.” The whole we now deal with is a self-referential whole, thus an inescapably
paradoxical one. Accordingly, we are no longer in the realm of a foundationalist “first”
philosophy but rather in the realm of a “second-order” philosophy of observations of the
observations of self and other. (Rasch in the introduction to Luhmann, 2002, p. 3)
While within education research this agenda is being addressed with a focus on,
for example, school organization and governance (Andersen & Pors, 2021), policy
and the second- order observation of education (Mangez & Vanden Broeck, 2020),
inclusion (Qvortrup & Qvortrup, 2018) and curriculum change (Hilt & Riese, 2022),
the challenges of the plurality of mathematics education for both research and prac-
tice begs a development of this initial systems theory analysis, to understand the
plurality of mathematics education and, importantly, its relationship to society.
Systems theory may be useful beyond the sociological and the social psychologi-
cal. It is possible that the study of mathematical cognition may benefit from a sys-
tems perspective, especially in relation to the conscious processes of distinction and
recursion as the basis of the construction of mathematical objects and processes. It
might be that studies of the learning of early number (see Gilmore et al., 2018)
reveal more about the development in the sophistication of distinctions made by
psychic systems in response to symbols and communication. Experimental studies
of young children and number seem to suggest the observation of distinctions as
much as it does as the development of operational processes and symbolic
representation.
6.7 Concluding Remarks
Here, I have aimed at introducing (the social system of) mathematics education to
contemporary systems theory by outlining some features of the theory itself and the
directions and themes which I am taking up in my preliminary inquiry into mathe-
matics education. I began contextualizing this in terms of the paradoxes that con-
temporary society increasingly makes evident, this is captured in the Luhmannian
notion of the paradox of difference in unity. Society represents a difference in unity
and so does the system of mathematics education in terms of a systemic treatment.
Rather than suppress the paradoxical reality, systems theory begins with an unfold-
ing of paradox, accepting that society and cognition stabilizes self-referentially,
autopoietically, and improbably through evolutionary processes of variation and
selection and through societal differentiation.
The question arises from this then of what use is this to mathematics education?
While my purpose here has been to outline a theory of social systems consistent
with volume’s intent to present works in progress in relation to the philosophy of
mathematics education, a central issue for mathematics education is the improve-
ment of mathematical capabilities of individuals in order that they can sustain them-
selves and contribute to society. Systems theory is not the first theoretical approach
that provides a critique of the instrumental and sometimes reductive accounts of
individual mathematical learning. However, it does not reject the cognitive aspects
138 S. Watson
of learning. It does offer a way of understanding the relationship between the social
(as communication) and cognitive (individual psychic systems). Again, these dis-
tinctions can be integrated within social psychology, socio-cultural, and Vygotskian
derivatives such as cultural-historical activity theory or the anthropological theory
of didactics. What systems theory facilitates is understanding of the social and cog-
nitive dimensions within a theory of society and from this a theory of mathematics
education as a social system of communication. Reflections upon mathematical
learning and in relation to human development often take for granted that learning
processes, pedagogy, curriculum and that represent foundational substrates. Systems
theory treats these aspects as constructs, and while it does not reject them, it asks
about the social and contingent basis in which these constructs became enduring
systems of meaning. In this way, systems theory provides a more precise way of
dealing with the concepts that we use in studying and reflecting on mathematics
education.
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Chapter 7
On Mathematical Validity and Its Human
Origins
Gerald A. Goldin
7.1 Introduction: Essentials for a Philosophy

For a philosophy of mathematics education to have full integrity, it should address

several fundamental issues. One of these is the nature of objective mathematical
truth and validity, in all its complexity. A second one is the human origin of math-
ematics: its development and application, its teaching and learning, in reasons for
existing – all taking place in environmental, cultural, social, cognitive, and affective
contexts. Many eminent philosophers have addressed particular aspects of these two
issues in great depth; a review is well beyond the scope of this chapter. Often one of
the two is taken as fundamental – explicitly or tacitly – with the consequence of
overtly denying or dismissing the other entirely.
Here, I maintain that they are not contradictory. This is why I argue for an inte-
grated philosophy incorporating both, rather than a diversity of mutually opposed
philosophies. Both objective mathematical truth and validity, and the view of math-
ematics as invented and developed by human beings, have philosophically sound
underpinnings, and both must emerge as central to the teaching and learning of
mathematics. However, the ways they most commonly enter mathematics education
now are not necessarily optimal or desirable. This chapter explores some of the
interplay between them – the senses in which mathematics is socially and culturally
dependent and the senses in which it is true and universal.
A related issue might be termed the “why” of mathematics. We have several
important interpretations of the term “why”: What does it mean to understand a
mathematical concept? Why does a pattern occur, or why does a theorem hold?
(e.g., Davis, 1992). Why have we formulated various axiom systems of
G. A. Goldin (*)
Departments of Mathematics and Physics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
e-mail: geraldgoldin@dimacs.rutgers.edu
142 G. A. Goldin
mathematics as we have? Why have we defined various concepts, categories, and

objects the way that we have? Why have we named them as we have? Why do we
represent mathematical constructs with the conventional symbol systems that we
use? What is the wider purpose of a concept? Why should students be required to
learn various topics? Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, why might a student
want to engage at all with learning or doing mathematics (Middleton & Jansen, 2011)?
I hope to offer some perspectives on the above issues to which I have come over
many years, as both a mathematics education researcher and a mathematical physi-
cist. I hold a personal philosophy of mathematics education, reflected in the views I
espouse here, but it is not an “ism.” Rather, I take a more eclectic perspective, draw-
ing on well-known elements of various fashionable and less-fashionable schools of
thought in the philosophical, psychological, and mathematics education literature,
while not adopting the limiting assumptions behind any one of them. Sometimes I
have found this perspective dismissed categorically by adherents of one or another
school – often for a priori philosophical reasons – because adherents value certain
features of mathematics learning very strongly, while devaluing others (Goldin,
2003, 2008). However, my purpose here is not to propose one new, eclectic philoso-
phy. Rather, I want to strengthen the case that any intellectually sound philosophy
must base itself on foundational pillars that support the centrality of both objective
mathematical truth and its psychologically and culturally situated human origins.
Academic philosophizing about mathematics education does not take place in a
vacuum. The philosophical pendulum in mathematics education has swung repeat-
edly in my lifetime: back and forth, between radical positivism and radical con-
structivism, between behaviorism and radical social constructivism, between
powerful absolutist and extreme relativist perspectives. Research and evaluation
studies offering justifications or critiques of educational policy and practice are
typically situated within one or another fashionable and influential philosophical
school of thought, characterized as a “theoretical framework.” Some variables and
constructs are then centralized, while other important ones can be dismissed out-
right and disregarded. In my view, the sociology of the academic world in education
favors proponents of extreme claims and powerfully dismissive philosophies.
Partly as a consequence, energized by political forces, educational policies and
practices have veered rather wildly. In the United States, we moved from “old math”
to “new math” to “back to basics” and have oscillated between “traditional” and
“reform” curricula and teaching methods. After much advocacy of “alternative
assessments,” we are presently in an era of mandated standardized testing – and
declining scores.
Each of the aforementioned philosophical “isms” is based on some unquestion-
ably valuable idea – some essential feature of mathematics, its teaching and learn-
ing, or a related educational research methodology. Many careful and valuable
studies have been carried out by researchers energized by their belief in one of the
“isms.” I propose that we build thoughtfully on such research. Nevertheless, we
must also recognize the damage that occurs when a philosophical system claims
universality and exclusivity as a founding principle, dismissing concepts that do not
fit – based not on evidence of their inapplicability, but on a priori argumentation.
7 On Mathematical Validity and Its Human Origins 143
To be specific, behaviorists – with a philosophy rooted ultimately in twentieth-

century logical positivism and radical empiricism (Ayer, 1946) – rejected discus-
sions of mathematical understanding as “mentalistic,” allowing only the
meaningfulness of straightforwardly observable outcomes – e.g., defined perfor-
mance objectives or test scores (Skinner, 1974; Sund & Picard, 1972). Radical con-
structivists – with a philosophy rooted ultimately in the seventeenth-century
idealism of Bishop George Berkeley (Downing, 2021) – dismissed objective truth
and validity as admissible topics of discussion, declaring the only acceptable focus
to be the viability of a concept for an individual or (in the case of radical social
constructivism) for a social group. Thus, correctness in mathematical reasoning and
the validity of science could all be reduced either to the individual’s “experiential
reality,” or else to social consensus (Confrey, 2000; von Glasersfeld, 1996).
These philosophical belief systems—behaviorism, radical, and social construc-
tivism—only implicitly addressed the foundations of mathematics per se. They per-
tained most directly to its learning and teaching, especially how we define, assess,
or evaluate learning processes and outcomes. I have termed them “dismissive epis-
temologies.” Within each, one finds both centrally important ideas and serious phil-
osophical flaws (e.g., Slezak, 2000; Goldin, 2003). I want to advocate here for a far
more inclusive approach to the philosophy of mathematics education. Its epistemo-
logical foundations belong in empiricism, rationalism, socio-culturalism, pragma-
tism, and ethical philosophy, broadly construed. It should be a philosophy addressing
human needs through objective mathematical truths and objectively valid applica-
tions. It should also be a philosophy taking full account of the human origins of
mathematics. It should be able to account for truth and validity through features that
distinguish mathematics from other, less objective domains of human inquiry.
I think such a philosophy is not only tenable and defensible, but necessary if we
are to achieve excellent and universally accessible learning in mathematics.
At the outset, let me highlight some limitations of this chapter. Most of the ideas
presented are well known and have been explored in depth by philosophers, mathema-
ticians, and educators. Consequently, the citations are necessarily far from adequate.
It is the integration of these ideas into a comprehensive, practical philosophy for
which I argue. We need a philosophy that can drive our research and our educational
practices progressively and productively, rather than fostering wild swings of fashion.
In the next section, I discuss sources of validity and truth in mathematics and the
meaning of these ideas in the human context of their development. In so doing, I
offer responses to certain frequently raised objections to such constructs. I also sug-
gest some roles they can best play in excellent mathematics teaching. The discus-
sion also delves somewhat more deeply into the notion of fallibility in mathematics
(e.g., Ernest, 1991).
The third section explores and elaborates on the “why” of mathematics and the
importance of many interpretations of this “why” in teaching and learning. Here, I
distinguish misconceptions from alternate (valid) conceptions learners may have,
and stress the essential role of errors and misconceptions in powerful mathematical
problem solving. The concluding section of the chapter relates the study of mathe-
matics directly to the meeting of fundamental human needs, suggesting directions
to modify our educational priorities accordingly.
144 G. A. Goldin
7.2 Sources of Objective Truth and Validity in Mathematics
7.2.1 Social Constructivism
Mathematics as we know it was formulated by human beings, in order to meet

human needs. It is likely that mathematics originated in prehistoric times, through
its creation for various practical purposes. Counting probably dates to well before
recorded history. Measures of length, area, volume, and time served numerous goals
that took different forms in different ancient civilizations. Stories and myths sur-
rounded the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars, whose observed regularities
formed the basis of human calendars and beliefs. Various increasingly elaborate
systems of representation developed differently in different cultures, describing
numerical and fractional quantities as well as geometrical constructs.
Human beings noticed patterns in the systems they created and asked questions
about such patterns. Do numbers go on forever? Some groupings of object, described
by numbers, cannot be arranged in rectangular arrays. Do such “prime” numbers go
on forever? Assumptions were systematized and reasoning formalized, always by
human beings, and in different ways by different people in different cultures. The
questions asked were socially and culturally situated, as they continue to be today.
Isn’t then mathematics entirely a human, culturally dependent social construct?
Of course, it is, as is the product of every other human activity. To say mathemat-
ics is a human construct merely places it alongside all science, all myth, all religion,
all beliefs, all language, all literature, all culture, all economics and politics – as
well as all farms, all factories, all dwellings, all buildings and bridges, all clothing,
all objects created through arts and crafts, etc.
The statement adds little or no actual information. However, it focuses the mind
in a certain way. It encourages us to attend closely to important questions that should
influence or be explicitly addressed in mathematics education, for example:
• How does and can mathematics meet human needs?
• Through what processes do people create and study mathematical ideas?
• Through what historical processes has mathematics developed?
• How and why do different cultures vary in the mathematics they create and use?
• What are the psychological processes behind mathematical learning, problem
solving, inventiveness, and creativity?
• What culturally dependent aesthetic features encourage appreciation of beauty in
mathematics?
• How do our policies and practices in mathematics education facilitate or impede
mathematical engagement and the learning, appreciation, and effective uses of
mathematics by our students?
• How can we best engage in culturally relevant mathematics teaching?
• How do power, politics, racial and gender discrimination, ethnocentricity, and
economics shape the development of mathematics as a field, establish hegemony,
and limit who has access and whose ideas gain notice?
These are essential questions. To the extent that the statement, “Mathematics is a
human social construct” helps us focus on them, it is a helpful foundational pillar
for our philosophy.
In some philosophical approaches, however, the statement takes the unfortunate
form, “Mathematics is just [or only] a human social construct.” Here, the not-yet-
stated implication is that mathematical truth or validity is fundamentally indistin-
guishable from the truth or validity of any other human belief system – science,
religion, myth, superstition, or individual idiosyncrasy of conception or misconcep-
tion. All are merely sociocultural or psychological constructs, to be kept or dis-
carded according to their social, cultural, or personal viability for the group or
individual that uses them. An approach that begins by denying the very possibility
of characteristics such as truth and validity – features that ultimately distinguish
mathematics from other forms of human activity – should not be the basis for a
widely accepted philosophy of mathematics education. A detailed critique of radical
social constructivism is offered by Slezak (2000).
7.2.2 Objective Truth in Mathematics
Platonism, logicism, and formalism (Horsten, 2022) Mathematicians and phi-

losophers have taken various approaches to the nature of mathematical truth. Some
of these are also tacitly or overtly dismissive. In a Platonist perspective, the objects
described by mathematics (number, geometrical objects) exist in a separate, time-
less world of ideal forms. Their properties – the truths of mathematics – are eternal
and independent of human beings, with the possibility of being (partially) known
through processes of thought. The school of thought known as logicism, associated
with Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Alfred North Whitehead (but with roots
going back to Euclid), sought to establish the objects and truths of mathematics,
including sets and numbers, as derived purely through logical deduction from initial
axioms. In the formalist philosophy advanced by David Hilbert, mathematics con-
sists of symbols and consistent rules for manipulating them – without their holding
any intrinsic meaning at all. Kurt Gödel succeeded in showing, however, that such
formalist or logicist systems, if sufficient to include infinite sets, could never be
proven complete or consistent – except by assuming rules of inference that them-
selves could not be proven complete or consistent (Nagel & Newman, 1958;
Hofstadter, 1979). Gödel himself appears to have been a Platonist (Goldstein, 2005).
Intuitionism and Lakatosian philosophy In contrast to these approaches, the
intuitionist school of philosophy, credited to Luitzen Egbertus Jan (L. E. J.) Brouwer,
begins with mental constructs and the mathematical properties that are evident from
those constructs; all the rest of mathematics that is meaningful should be obtained
from these intuitions through constructive processes. Nonconstructive mathemati-
cal principles are thus inadmissible. Lakatos focused on the actual practices of
mathematicians, who arrive at a consensus about mathematical truths (e.g., the cor-
146 G. A. Goldin
rectness of a published proof) through discussion and explanatory discourse, not

through strict application of a purely symbolic formalism. One sees in intuitionism
and Lakatosian philosophy some roots of radical constructivist and social construc-
tivist philosophy, respectively, that are specific to mathematics and an influence on
humanist approaches to its teaching (e.g., Davis & Hersh, 1981).
I maintain that a philosophy of mathematics education does not require exclusive
commitment to a specific philosophy of mathematics per se. In fact, to the extent
that Platonism, formalism, logicism, intuitionism, Lakatosian philosophy, or other
approaches are exclusionary of different perspectives, it is far better to rest the foun-
dations of our philosophy on multiple pillars. When our educational goal is to con-
vey a sense of awesome, timeless beauty, Platonist ideas may help us do so. We can
then focus on what is universal in mathematics, the constructs that seem to tran-
scend cultures and eras. When our goal is to explore logical deduction, theorems
and proofs, a logicist perspective provides a deeper understanding of the power of
mathematics.
When we seek to convey an understanding of non-Euclidean geometry, we may
point out that in a formalist perspective, we are free to interpret the terms in Euclid’s
postulates (such as “point,” “straight line,” and “distance”) as we wish; only the
relationships stated in the postulates matter. Thus, the term “point” might be inter-
preted as a pair of antipodal points on the surface of a sphere; “line” might stand for
a great circle; and “distance” might refer to the length of a segment of the great
circle. Then a “straight line” is still the shortest “distance” between two “points” –
but the parallel postulate no longer holds.
Focusing on mental imagery and constructive processes in the psychology of
mathematics learning centralizes an intuitionist perspective, and we have already
discussed the opportunities inherent in a social constructivist perspective. Indeed,
there is great educational value in attending to all these dimensions of mathematics,
without taking any one to be its “real” or only foundation. The source of truth that
becomes relevant depends on what question we want to ask or what issue we want
to address. The various foundational sources are complementary, not
contradictory.
There are two main ways to approach the objective character of mathematics:
through the idea of empirical truth or that of rational or logical truth.
Empirical truth When we create a mathematical system of representation,
together with its definitions, rules, and procedures, we often do so to describe a class
of situations and to make inferences and predictions about them. If the mathematics
we are using is valid, these will be borne out by subsequent information and events;
otherwise, our predictions will at some point fail. Here, the empirical validity of the
mathematics depends on at least two aspects: (a) the applicability of the model used
to describe the situation and (b) the internal consistency and correctness of reason-
ing within the mathematics.
(a) It is not difficult to find examples of (objectively) correct mathematics applied
inappropriately to reach (objectively) false conclusions. For example, causation
is often inferred falsely from correlation. If the conclusions serve (viable) polit-
ical or social purposes, as is often the case, they may come to be widely
accepted. Such social consensus does not suffice for their truth and should not
suffice for us to believe they are true. Nor should we settle for saying they are
“true for this group” while “untrue for that group” – a stance wholly lacking in
intellectual integrity. Mathematics education should provide students with the
power of knowledge – the ability to distinguish valid from invalid mathematical
applications or models.
(b) A different failure of empirical validity may occur if a mathematical conclusion
reached within the mathematical system is itself (objectively) false. An incor-
rect computation may be due to a clerical error or to a more fundamental mis-
conception. This may lead to a recipe that fails, a loan that is disadvantageous
to the borrower, or furniture that fails to fit in the planned space. The prediction
fails empirically because the mathematics used to generate it contradicts math-
ematical truth.
The property of being a human construction offers no protection from objective
empirical truth or falsity—a traffic bridge is a human construct, but whether the
bridge stands or falls is objective fact.
Rational truth Having created a mathematical system (e.g., a system of counting)
with accompanying ways of representing it (e.g., spoken and written numbers), we
can proceed to axiomatize it—to identify the rules governing our creation and our
reasoning about it. Then truth can be defined entirely in relation to the assumed
system of axioms and rules of inference. A vector, for example, is no longer simply
a way to represent something in real life, such as a velocity, by “a directed line seg-
ment” or as “a quantity with both magnitude and direction” —an interpretation
suggesting human intuitions with potential empirical validation of the mathematics
of vectors. Instead, a vector becomes “an element of a vector space,” where the vec-
tor space is a set defined in relation to another set, called a scalar field. Both sets are
endowed with operations that obey certain axioms. Now the “truths” about vectors
and scalars are the axioms, true by virtue of their assumption, together with theo-
rems provable from those axioms through well-defined, logical reasoning processes.
To characterize mathematical truth this way – i.e., through logicism – is to place it
in the domain of what philosophers have termed “analytic” truth (e.g. Ayer, 1946) –
statements that are true a priori by virtue of meanings or definitions, requiring no
empirical verification. It appears that the capability of such reasoning, sometimes
called “logical thinking,” is common to human beings in every culture.
It is virtually non-existent in mathematics (though the situation is spectacularly
different in science) that different social or cultural groups engaged in mathematics
come to believe in systems of truths that actually contradict each other.1
1
However, there have been historical periods of disagreement, followed by radical shifts in belief
among mathematicians, over some metamathematical issues, for example: whether Euclid’s postu-
lates are “self-evident truths,”, whether negative numbers “really exist,”, or whether mathematics
can be formalized in a complete and consistent way (e.g., Kline, 1980).
148 G. A. Goldin
Does this agreement across cultures alone demonstrate that mathematical truth
and validity are indeed universal and eternal? Of course, in a certain sense it does.
The convergence of belief, attributable to the objective truth of mathematics, has
probably encouraged an “absolutist” philosophical stance to thrive across the mil-
lennia. Paradoxically, mathematical consensus seems also to have allowed the more
recent opposite conception to thrive, that rational truth in mathematics has no objec-
tivity beyond the fact of a powerful social consensus of mathematicians. Of course,
radical social constructivism fails spectacularly in empirical domains when consen-
sus is absent. In the biological sciences today, in this time of pandemic, substantial
numbers of powerful people adhere firmly to and promulgate the (objectively false)
belief that vaccination is ineffective and dangerous – with deaths occurring as a
consequence of the false belief system. A philosophy of mathematics education that
has integrity should be wholly compatible with a sound philosophy of science,
where mathematics finds both important applications and sources of inspiration.
Denial a priori of the very possibility of rational objectivity, distinguishing mathe-
matics from other forms of human activity, should not be a feature of our mathemat-
ics education philosophy.
7.2.3 Objectivism
Formalists and logicisits attribute mathematical truth to logic alone. From a purely
formalist point of view, the structures of mathematics and the structures of games
such as chess or checkers are quite parallel. Once the set of rules is assumed, the
question of whether with best play chess will always end in a draw has just one true
answer, now and forever. This does not, of course, contradict the human origin of
chess – its rules are quite evidently socially constructed, without any necessity
whatsoever, and clearly culturally situated.2
Platonists, on the other hand, ascribe to abstract mathematical structures a kind
of independent, eternal existence in a realm of ideals that we access but partially. In
this philosophical viewpoint, perfect circles, squares, and regular polyhedra
(“Platonic solids”) have always existed, apart from human beings—but then, pre-
sumably, so must have far more exotic (and equally beautiful) constructs, such as
the Sierpinski triangle, the Mandelbrot set, and the quantum plane.
“Absolutist” philosophical systems – embracing the idea that there is only one
mathematics, that it is eternal and universal, transcending not only all cultures, but
humanity itself – may encourage us to focus on aspects of mathematics education
2
Of course, chess is a finite game and thus such a question has a definite answer—though we may
not know now what the answer is. In contrast, mathematics involves infinite sets, where the work
of Gödel demonstrates that with a given set of rules of inference, not every proposition can be
resolved as either true or false. The notion of “truth” extends beyond what is provable with the
specified rules of inference.
that are valuable, but different from those suggested by radical constructivism, for
example:
• How can we develop students’ skills so that they reason validly and solve prob-
lems powerfully and correctly?
• How can we foster students’ processes of abstraction and their understanding of
abstract structures and proof in mathematics?
• What role should axiomatization, logical reasoning from axioms, and theorem
proving play to enable students to grasp both the generality and the certainty of
mathematical results?
• How can we best assess, objectively, when and in what ways students have
acquired valid conceptual understandings and are proficient in performing cor-
rect computations in arithmetic, algebra, and calculus?
• How can we incorporate powerful and valid applications of abstract mathematics
most effectively in the curriculum?
• Observing that people in all cultures are capable of logical reasoning, can the
resulting universality of mathematical truths help to bridge cultural gaps across
the world?
• How can we educate students to appreciate the beauty to be found in abstract
mathematics, to find fascination in the mathematical objects in a Platonic world
of ideal forms?
These are essential questions to ask. Absolutist philosophies are helpful to the
extent that they remind us of the importance of correctness, valid conceptions,
and the power that comes with understanding mathematical truth and its sources.
They lead us to the power of abstraction in mathematics and the idea of a struc-
ture that may apply to or describe a variety of very different concrete situations.
As mathematics educators, we should want students to understand the concepts
of structure, isomorphism, homomorphism, etc., as well as the idea that features
of mathematical structures may be established via theorems proved by logical
deduction from definitions and axioms. Our goals should include helping stu-
dents acquire some facility with reasoning and proof – with what is often termed
“logical thinking.”
Mathematicians tend to favor approaching objective truth rationally and
analytically, through theorems and proofs. To create mathematics, researchers
may identify a pattern, investigate it, formulate a conjecture, and then try to
prove it or to demonstrate its falsity through counterexample or by proving its
negation.
Applied mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, and other scientists may
approach mathematical truth empirically. To create mathematics, researchers invent
a mathematical object or method, motivated by a situation, to model the situation. It
may be that the invented object does not even “exist” (yet) mathematically, but
using it seems to work. Rules motivated by the situation are applied – and only later
is the object or method defined precisely, the rules axiomatized, and theorems proven.
150 G. A. Goldin
But as we see, formalism and Platonism are also open to some fundamental
philosophical objections. The limitations of formalism in fully establishing founda-
tions for mathematics have been quite rigorously and beautifully discussed
(Hofstadter, 1979). In mathematics education, formal theorems and proofs alone
may convey little or no understanding of the meanings or ideas behind the formal-
ized mathematics. And the reasons outside of pure mathematics behind the choices
of systems to axiomatize, from plane geometry to the natural numbers and onwards,
are not addressed.
Alternatively, the Platonist assumption of the independent existence of mathe-
matical truths implicitly accords extra ontological status to all possible systems of
assumptions and sets of inferencing procedures: not only games like chess and
poker, number systems, and non-Euclidean and noncommutative geometries, but
also all not-yet-created games and mathematical categories. All must “exist” as
ideal forms, independently of their ever having been imagined or invented. While
this is a fascinating mental image, taking such an assertion as one’s only starting
point – like starting with the assertion that mathematics is “only” a culturally situ-
ated human construction – focuses attention, but erases distinctions and conveys
little or no actual information.
Absolutism becomes damaging when it takes an unfortunately narrow and
authoritarian form. The assertion that there is one universally true mathematics
is sometimes tacitly assumed to rule out alternate (but valid) conceptions.
Algorithms that are nonstandard in one culture but standard in another, as well
as potentially fruitful and valid paths of inquiry that do not follow canonical
ways of thinking – i.e., alternate conceptions, as opposed to misconceptions –
can be unfortunately rejected by the teacher who “knows” what mathematics is
“supposed” to be.
Authoritarian absolutists may also greatly devalue misconceptions, mistakes,
and blind alleys. An exclusive focus on correctness can lead teachers to dismiss
or overlook the substantial value to learners that can result from misconceiving
something or making a mistake during problem-solving activity. Each occur-
rence of an error provides a singular opportunity for students to discuss it, to
come to understand why the conception fails or why the error occurred – and an
opportunity to strengthen problem-solving processes that reveal the error and
enable more profound understanding. It is also an opportunity for the teacher to
congratulate the student for opening the door to deeper, nonroutine insights for
everyone.
7.2.4 Fallibilism
Fallibilist philosophy in mathematics education takes mathematics to be socially

constructed but goes further to argue that mathematical truth itself is forever open to
question (Ernest, 1991). Indeed, the field of mathematics has not evolved histori-
cally through “progress” alone – the definition of new constructs, the formulation of
new axiom systems, the proving of new theorems, and the discovery of new applica-
tions. Substantial changes in mathematical definitions, notations, concept, proofs,
and consensus perspectives on these have all taken place, to the extent that some
statements once regarded as true would now be taken as false or ill-defined.
Fallibilism has value for mathematics education by focusing special attention on
specific processes of change – those that have modified our notions about what is
true or certain (e.g., Kline, 1980). It is also suggestive of the necessary, positive role
that false starts, blind alleys, and misconceptions play in powerful mathematical
problem solving as they occur and are addressed productively.
In its most extreme form, fallibilism has been interpreted to suggest that mathe-
matical truth per se does not exist – that every mathematical assertion is subject to
eventual falsification. Thus, not only is authoritarianism rejected – the very basis for
authority in mathematics is called into question.
It is helpful in teaching mathematics, and in constructing a philosophy of math-
ematics education, to explore the social and historical processes that have led to
changes in mathematics. In doing so, I think we can identify certain specific, dis-
tinct sources of change that have affected, or that hypothetically would affect, the
truth of mathematical statements. Knowing these means that we can understand
their role – and we need not, and should not, dismiss the very notion of objective
truth and validity in mathematics because of them. Instead we can offer students, at
appropriate points in their mathematical development, an understanding of how
change in mathematics has come about.
Changes in the meaning of truth One kind of change has been in our notion of
what meaning we attribute to mathematical “truth.” Early Greek geometers regarded
Euclid’s postulates as “self-evident truths.” That is, postulating them was not to
merely create a label for them as true, but to state as fact an already-existing truth.
Thus, Euclid’s “parallel postulate” was understood as an “eternal truth of mathemat-
ics,” albeit less self-evident than Euclid’s other postulates.
With the development of non-Euclidean geometries, we came to a different
understanding – that the truth of axioms and postulates, and the resulting theorems,
holds only within the system where they are defined. Euclid’s parallel postulate is
false in Riemannian and Lobachevskian geometries. And the empirical success of
general relativity suggests that the geometry of our universe is in fact
non-Euclidean.
Another change of meaning has been due to the work of Gödel already men-
tioned. It was formerly thought that the truth of a mathematical statement could be
taken as synonymous with its provability from the assumed axioms using well-
defined processes of inference. But this idea did not hold up – in a system that
allows for an infinite set, such as the natural numbers, statements must exist that are
true but unprovable.
Changes in representational conventions Many “true” statements in mathe-
matics are merely facts about currently agreed-upon systems of representations.
For example, we agree conventionally that numbers grow larger toward the right
on the number line and as we move upward on a vertical axis. Such a “truth” is
152 G. A. Goldin
quite obviously arbitrary, though we can suggest psychological and socio-cul-

tural reasons for it. We agree conventionally to perform multiplication and divi-
sion operations before addition and subtraction, so that the “correct” value of an
expression such as “8 + 12/4” is 11. In teaching, this rule is sometimes called the
“fundamental order of operations,” though there is nothing “fundamental” about
it. Here, “truth” changes easily. In a different context, where the convention is to
perform operations in order from left to right, the “correct” value of the above
expression would be 5.
The meanings attributed conventionally to mathematical expressions are
malleable. Before the advent of algebra, and in some contexts now, 3x might
suggest a 2-digit number with “3” in the “tens” place and an uncertain “units”
digit, rather than 3 times x. Depending on the context, dy may refer to a constant
d multiplying a variable y, to an infinitesimal change in the value of y, or to an
element of a cotangent space. The truth of statements relying on such contexts
is changeable.
Changes in the meaning of constructs The definitions that come to be accepted
in mathematics also change over time. Earlier conceptions of continuous curves
would not have accommodated the possibility of a function f(x) continuous at all
irrational values of x, but discontinuous at all rational values. In the time of Newton,
when calculus was being invented, the conception of continuity most widely held
did not accommodate functions that are everywhere continuous but nowhere dif-
ferentiable. Our concept of continuity now permits such constructs. As meanings
change and evolve, new “truths” supplant earlier ones.
As concepts in mathematics are generalized, statements earlier regarded as “true”
are true no longer. The common “misconception” in children that “Multiplication
always makes numbers larger, never smaller” is true, when “numbers” are inter-
preted solely as natural numbers 1, 2, 3, … (and the reference is to numbers other
than 1). When “numbers” are generalized to include fractions, and multiplication is
correspondingly generalized, the statement becomes false. Similar observations
apply to “misconceptions” such as “You can’t subtract a larger number from a
smaller one,” and “there is no square root of −1.”
Changes in language As concepts evolve, new constructs are introduced, and as
new applications of mathematics found, our language changes. New terms are intro-
duced, and old ones change their meanings. New contexts occur, and natural lan-
guage interpretation depends heavily on context. Consequently, “true” statements
with one set of meanings or in one context may, with different meanings or in other
contexts, be “untrue.” In this sense, statements in natural language of mathematical
truths can never be absolute or eternal.
Mathematics education and mathematical communication always occur through
natural language as well as symbols, and teachers typically evaluate students’
understandings based on the perceived correctness of their statements. Here, we
must all be sensitive to the possibility of our own “fallibility.”
The hypothetical possibility of consistent human error All of us occasionally

make mathematical mistakes and oversights. In any given session of mathematical
thinking by a particular person or group, the probability of error is nonzero. The
probability that the error remains undetected for a period of time is smaller, but still
non-zero, as is the probability that it is never detected. Theoretically, then, the prob-
ability must be nonzero that all human beings have consistently made the same
mathematical error, in computation or in reasoning, in studying a mathematical
result and in determining its truth. One may enjoy trying to estimate an order of
magnitude for its value, expressed in negative powers of 10. I think the smallness of
the estimate leaves us with no practical implications for mathematics education,
except perhaps for offering students an amusing exploration in probability and the
meaning of “practical certainty.”
Radical fallibilism as the foundation for a philosophy of mathematics education
has been critiqued in detail elsewhere (e.g., Rowland et al., 2010).
7.3 The “Why” of Mathematics
In a way, “The Why of Mathematics” could have been the title of this article.
Ultimately, a philosophy of mathematics education should guide us toward under-
standing this question of “why” in its many different interpretations.
Patterns A teacher may ask her students to explore why a pattern occurs—e.g., Why
does taking the differences between the successive square numbers 1,4,9,16,25,…
result in the sequence of successive odd numbers 3,5,7,9,…? One possible answer is
via an algebraic calculation: n2−(n − 1)2= n2−(n2−2n + 1) = 2n − 1. Such a com-
putation is at the heart of a formal proof – one possible way to answer the question.
But the resulting understanding, essentially formalist, is limited.
A different kind of answer is provided by discovering a way to partition a con-
crete set of chips arranged in a square (say 5 by 5). One can form a smaller square
(4 by 4), together with one smaller row and column (each with 4 chips) and 1 chip
sitting in the corner. So we display the difference between the two squares (twice 4
plus 1, or 9). This can be compared with the algebraic result (for n = 5, twice 5
minus 1). Answering the question “why” by connecting multiple representations is
a path to mathematical truth not suggested by formalism but highlighted in con-
structivism – and it leads to deeper understanding of a “true” reason for the pattern.
Definitions Another teacher may ask his class to explore why something is defined
mathematically the way it is. For example, why do we define n0 = 1 (for n = 1,2,3,…)
after we have defined nk as the product n times n times n … (k times). Why should
multiplying a number by itself 0 times be equal to 1 and not 0? And in the case of a
negative exponent, why should n-k be defined as the reciprocal 1/nk?
Here, answers to both questions eventually take the form of our wanting to extend
certain “laws of exponents” so that they will hold not only for positive exponents,
but for all integer exponents—a great idea! Does n−k “really” equal 1/nk? Obviously,
154 G. A. Goldin
this definition is a socially agreed-upon convention, and in that sense, it is not

“absolute truth”. But just as obviously, there is an important reason behind the con-
vention, which is characteristic of the development of mathematics and behind its
power to encompass more objective truths. The understanding of the learner who
discovers this is enhanced.
Arbitrary conventions Why do we have the arbitrary conventions in mathematics
that we do? For example, why is “ten” the base of our system of numeration? Why
then does 12 appear importantly in the English system of measurement? What led
to the metric system replacing it in many places? Why do both 12 and 60 play such
important roles in our measurement of time? Answers to such questions are both
historical and intrinsically mathematical. I have mentioned earlier conventions
about the order of arithmetic operations and about the directionality of numbers on
coordinate axes. The “why” behind these also leads to interesting discussions.
Exploring such topics enhances students’ powerful understanding of mathemat-
ics, and our philosophy of mathematics education should encourage every aspect of
their exploration. Thus, it should be possible to identify and distinguish what is true
and mathematically relevant (e.g., that 60 is divisible by 2,3,4,5,6 and 12), what is
historical (e.g., Babylonian mathematics and Ptolemy’s approach to astronomical
measurement), what may be guided by universal human experience (e.g., that we
have ten fingers, or that larger quantities form a heap that increases vertically), what
is cultural (e.g., that we read Western languages from left to right), and what is sim-
ply convenient or arbitrary (e.g., the order of performing arithmetic operations) –
and to discuss the interplay among all of these.
Applications and models Why do we need numbers, measures of length, area, and
volume, algebraic equations, geometric constructions and theorems, probability and
statistics, trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, abstract algebra, etc. at
all? What led to their construction? The empirical origins of particular mathematical
topics are often mentioned in passing, but deserve to be explored by students in
depth. For example, can the idea of a “unit square” be used to define the area of a
rectangle? A triangle? A circle? How can we do so, in order that area measures ful-
fill the applications we have in mind? At a more advanced level, why do the axioms
defining a mathematical group include the associative property, but not the com-
mutative property? Consider what axioms allow us to describe the permutations of
a set or the symmetry transformations of a 2- or 3-dimensional object. Why might
we want to?
Here, exploration can lead to a deeper understanding of both the mathematics
and the motivation for the mathematics as representing a situation. If area measure
should describe how much paint is needed to cover a floor of irregular shape, we
expect that two triangles forming a rectangle should require twice the paint needed
for each triangle. If one approximates a circular area of given diameter with trian-
gular wedges, one can discover the area formula A = πr2. It is mathematically true
in Euclidean geometry, while we have just seen how the very notion of area is
socially constructed for many practical purposes. Again, a comprehensive and valu-
able philosophy should encourage both.
Reasons to learn mathematics Why should students study mathematics at all?
Why should they have to learn ratio and proportion, descriptive statistics, the qua-
dratic formula, or trigonometric identities? Students are typically offered a variety
of reasons for the importance of their study. These include areas of application in
everyday life, the importance of STEM to scientific and technological progress or to
national goals, course prerequisites for college admission, the many desirable career
opportunities that mathematics may open for them later in life, and our belief that
studying mathematics will help them learn to think logically about many other
things, too. Some of these answers are sustainable for particular topics, while others
are patently untrue. Efforts to modernize the mathematics curriculum typically
focus on the immediate practical importance and the long-term utility of the con-
tent – important criteria. For example, statistics and probability greatly exceed trig-
onometry in these respects.
But there are other important criteria too that deserve consideration. Some stu-
dents may want to become mathematicians or physicists, while most will not. Some
students are mathematically talented and others less so – but mathematical talent is
not synonymous with mathematical speed. The in-the-moment psychological needs
and satisfactions of students are often disregarded or misconceived, resulting in
unresolved frustration and the widespread incidence of “math anxiety” among
adults. I discuss this further in the next section.
A comprehensive philosophy of mathematics education should provide a foun-
dation for embracing all of these important reasons to study mathematics – remain-
ing open to many diverse sources of motivation, while valuing those that foster
engagement and learning.
7.4 Mathematics and Fundamental Human Needs: Conation

and Mathematical Engagement
The term conation refers to the domain of human psychology pertaining to drives,
needs, desires, “will,” or choice – the “why” of all that we do (e.g., Snow et al., 1996).
Elsewhere, my colleagues and I have considered diverse in-the-moment desires
that motivate students to engage in mathematical activity or to disengage from it
(Goldin et al., 2011). The approach that I advocate is to offer students the experi-
ence of fundamental needs being met throughout their mathematics learning, from
kindergarten through higher education (Goldin, 2020).
There are several ways in which mathematics can authentically fulfill fundamen-
tal needs “in the moment” without relying on applicability to daily life, extrinsic
rewards, or the promise of achieving distant goals. Here, I suggest five: through
aesthetic experience, the experience of power, the gaining of insight, the reward of
social connection, and self-expression through creativity. Each of these addresses a
156 G. A. Goldin
domain of basic human need. Our philosophy of mathematics of education should

provide a foundation for all of them.
Aesthetics Human beings universally appreciate beauty, and students can experi-
ence mathematics as beautiful – through patterns in nature that mathematics
describes, through a feeling of reverence for its truth and universality, through the
elegance of reasoning in certain proofs, and through the sense of wonder that often
accompanies understanding – e.g., in an “Aha! experience (Czarnocha & Baker,
2021). Our philosophy of mathematics education should include a basis for know-
ing and valuing these sources of aesthetic appreciation – i.e., a foundation for
empirical and rational truth, as well as for depth of understanding.
Power Adler (1927) writes of the “will to power” as a basic human drive. As stu-
dents learn, they can experience power in different ways – the power to do things
they could not do before, to solve new problems, and to understand aspects of the
world about them in new ways, and the power of their own reasoning to gain insight.
For such power, mathematical validity is essential, and our philosophy should pro-
vide a foundation for it. But this sense of power does not stem from compliance
with or submission to authority – it is the opposite. “True” mathematics is not syn-
onymous here with “authority-based” mathematics.
Connection Social connection is likewise a fundamental human need – a sense
of belonging and contributing, acknowledgment by others, friendship and partner-
ship, status and respect. Mathematics need not and should not be an activity per-
formed only in isolation. The social processes of doing and using
mathematics – exploration and problem-solving problems with a partner or in a
group, bouncing around ideas, responding to each other’s thoughts, reaching a
consensus of understanding – all provide opportunities for “in the moment” ful-
fillment through social interactions. Our philosophy of mathematics education
should incorporate a foundation for the social process of doing mathematics –
mathematics as a human activity, with “human” understood to include the affec-
tive as well as the cognitive.
Insight Children exhibit curiosity from an early age – a fundamental human drive
to experience and understand the world. A student’s insight can occur dramatically,
as in the “Aha!” experience, or bit by bit, as one sees more when one climbs higher
on a scenic path. To provide opportunities for insight, the “why” of mathematics in
all its interpretations is critical. Our philosophy should provide a foundation for all
of them.
Self-expression Maslow (1943) places “self-actualization” at the apex of his pyra-
mid of human needs. Self-expression, a form of self-actualization, is most often
thought of in relation to music, literature, or the arts and crafts. But opportunities for
acts of creation and invention abound in mathematics. Skilled teachers seek to foster
creativity in their students, as learners invent their own rules and patterns, make up
original problems, put forth original conjectures, generate original proofs, and find
new ways to solve well-known problems. Our philosophy of education can draw on
constructivist ideas, highlighting the human invention of mathematics and inviting

all to participate in its continuing invention and reinvention.
As students seek to fulfill their motivating desires during mathematical activity,
they typically experience frustration with impasses during problem solving, unease
when they do not understand, or disappointment when their ideas turn out to be
“wrong” or when their suggestions are not accepted by others. The skilled teacher
does not seek to remove negative affect, but to enable students to “see it through” –
to experience fulfillment of the desire accompanied by elation, satisfaction, a sense
of accomplishment, and increased self-efficacy.
7.5 Summary and Conclusion
A philosophy of mathematics education should draw on valid, nondismissive, and

noncontradictory elements in various philosophies of what mathematics is. It should
not be a theory of just one way to build the foundations of mathematics technically.
I hope I have made the case that such a philosophy should provide foundational pil-
lars for all that is involved in the complexities of mathematical learning and teach-
ing. None of the “dismissive epistemologies” can do this – not radical behaviorism,
authoritarian absolutism, strict formalism, logicism, or Platonism, radical construc-
tivism, radical social constructivism, or any other epistemology that excludes
important features of mathematics a priori: its human origins, its purposes, its con-
texts, or its truth and validity.
Behaviorists maintain that all anyone can observe in mathematics learning and
teaching is behavior and its productions. Radical constructivists argue that an indi-
vidual has access only to that person’s individual world of experience and can have
no knowledge beyond that. Radical social constructivists see objectivity as impos-
sible, as all knowledge is constructed socially. Some proponents of such “isms” may
argue that the features ruled out can be accounted for within their system – but at
best they are devalued, and in the extreme, one is not even allowed to talk about
them. Such philosophical approaches should not form the basis for a comprehensive
philosophy of mathematics education.
What is needed is a far more eclectic approach, based on several philosophical
pillars – one that accounts for, rather than dismisses, truth and validity in mathe-
matics, and accounts for and explores its culturally situated human origins. I do
not think we can authentically claim to be mathematics educators while rejecting
the importance of objective mathematical truth and correctness, or rejecting dis-
cussions of mathematical understanding and mental processes, or disregarding the
affective domain as inessential, or dismissing the importance of
ethnomathematics.
But we must recognize that each of the aforementioned “isms” has a valid reason
for its appeal – an important nugget of real value. Behaviorism reminds us of the
importance of observable phenomena, empirical inquiry, and more objective mea-
sures of learning. Constructivism focuses attention on the thinking of the individual,
158 G. A. Goldin
particularly on constructive processes that occur during learning. Social construc-

tivism points to the negotiation of meaning, calling attention to classroom cultures
and culturally relevant teaching, and welcoming the study of diverse cultural prac-
tices and origins of mathematical systems.
A comprehensive philosophy of mathematics education should provide strong
foundational pillars for all considerations that have to do with the learning, experi-
ence, appreciation, and use of mathematics by students in a variety of cultures. It
should strengthen teachers in striving to enable all their students to be successful
and highly motivated learners, making use of manifold tools and techniques. I have
offered here some reasons as to why such a philosophy is needed and suggested
some of its important elements.
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Part II
Philosophy of Mathematics Education:
Creativity and Educational Perspectives
Chapter 8
Towards a Philosophy of Creativity
in Mathematics Education
Bronisław Czarnocha
8.1 Introduction
This chapter discusses the formulation of a philosophy of creativity in mathematics

education as a subdomain of the philosophy of mathematics education. We have
observed the recent increase of interest in philosophical issues in our profession
(Ernest, 2018); however, creativity is not specifically mentioned in this volume. One
reason is that the general philosophy of creativity seems to be in statu nascendi.
Paul and Kaufman (2013, p.3) tell us that “philosophy of creativity is still a neolo-
gism in most quarters.”
Two recently published surveys of Philosophy of Creativity by Paul and Kaufman
(2013) and Gaut and Kieran (2018) guide our discussions. Classical themes such as
ethics and the value of creativity and creativity in the arts and sciences are explored
together with creativity in the context of mind, cognitive science, AI, and in nature.
With respect to aspects of creativity that are relevant to us but are not “covered” by
the surveys of Paul and Kaufman (2013) and Gaut and Kieran (2018), such as cre-
ativity and learning or measurability of creativity, we direct interested readers to
supplementary material published outside the philosophical mainstream.
Paul and Kaufman (2013) provide us with a methodological tip on how to start
the process of formulation of the subdomain. As the researchers note, even though
creativity has not occupied a central place in philosophy today, there has been a
surge of interest in creativity within psychology and related domains, including
research and practice of mathematics education.
At the same time, however, we note that Glaveanu (2014) in his critical reading
of the Psychology of Creativity observes that although the field is thriving, the
“discipline is in crisis.” He attributes the crisis to the large number of divergent ideas
in the field and the relatively little constructive accumulation of ideas. This has
B. Czarnocha (*)
Hostos Community College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA
164 B. Czarnocha
resulted in abandoning big ideas in favor of specialized inquiries. As a consequence,

Glaveanu (2014) asserts that this process ends up effectively excluding everyday
creative tasks including creativity that takes place in a classroom. In response to the
crisis in the psychology of creativity, there has been increased interest in Maslow’s
humanistic psychology, which views creativity through the lens of individual self-
realization posited at the very top of his pyramid of typology of human needs.
Maslow’s humanistic approach directs attention to everyday tasks called for by
Glaveanu (2014): “I learned from her and others like her that a first-rate soup is
more creative than a second rate painting” Maslow (2018).
Thus, to make the connection between the manifold of ideas being investigated,
among others, within the thriving domain of Philosophy of Creativity and creativity
of the classroom, we approach the philosophy of creativity from two directions,
using Ernest’s (2018) metaphors: bottom-up and top-down. The bottom-up approach
uses the teaching-research methodology of starting with the practice of creativity in
our classes (Czarnocha et al., 2016) and develops that pathway into a research
approach. The top-down approach, by contrast, relies on the general philosophy of
creativity included in the two volumes and guides us in exploring appropriate results
and reflections of researchers and teachers of mathematics concerned with
mathematical creativity in the classroom.
This chapter aims at answering the following question: What can the practice of
and research in creativity of mathematics education contribute to the philosophy of
creativity in mathematics education and possibly to the philosophy of creativity in
general?
Finally, since Ernest (2018, p.15) suggests that the point of departure for such an
endeavor should be “the critical examination of its fundamental problems” in
mathematics education in the context of the systemic analysis of the domain will we
follow that lead. This chapter is the synthesis and amplification of two recent
presentations (Czarnocha, 2022a, b).
The last two sections of this chapter provide a summary of the discussion fol-
lowed by Philosophical Conclusions.
8.2 What Is Creativity?
Nearly all teachers of mathematics have encountered situations in our classes when
we have intuitively recognized a student who has come up with an unusually creative
response to a problem or asked an insightful question. Without a clear and accepted
definition of creativity, however, we do not always understand what was creative in
that student’s remark or how to reinforce its impact on the other students in the class.
To help us answer this question, Paul and Kaufman (2013) offer the following
definition of creativity: “The term “creative” is used to describe three kinds of
things: a person, a process or activity, or a product…There is an emerging consensus
that a product must meet two conditions to be creative. It must be new of course, …,
it must also be of value.” Boden (2004), based on her involvement with AI, defines
8 Towards a Philosophy of Creativity in Mathematics Education 165
creativity as the ability to generate creative ideas (artifacts) – where a creative idea
is novel, surprising and valuable.
To these definitions, we add another. Moruzzi (2021), who is interested in those
aspects of natural and artificial creativity that do not depend on external factors but
only on the inner structure of the creative system, bases her analysis on three creative
features: problem solving, evaluation, and naivety. Of course, there are many more
definitions in the field. Mann (2006) has found over 100 different definitions of
creativity in the profession. Investigations of the approach based on the self-
awareness of learners as creative individuals have been conducted by Shriki and
Lavy (2014), while a new approach via the relationship between imagination, cre-
ativity and innovation has been proposed by Karwowski et al. (2017) in the context
of conjunctional model of creative imagination.
In mathematics education, two approaches to creativity stand out. The first is the
Gestalt approach adopted by Wallas (2014) and Hadamard (1945); the second origi-
nated with the work of Guilford (1950). There are interesting basic differences
between the two: whereas the Wallas/Hadamard theory describes the creative
process, the Guilford/Torrance theory addresses human creative capacities.
The Gestalt approach emphasizes the creative process which has several, more or
less consecutive stages of preparation and incubation leading to illumination or
insight as the sudden restructuring of a problem’s situation. Under Poincare’s
influence, Wallas added the last stage: verification. Sadler-Smith’s (2015) recent
examination of Wallas’s work suggests a fifth stage of intimation between incubation
and illumination. Davidson’s (1996) three-process theory helps in identifying
different types of insight. Selective combination takes place when someone suddenly
puts together elements of the problem situation in a way that previously was not
obvious to the individual. Selective encoding occurs when a person suddenly sees
one or more features that previously have not been obvious (Davidson, 1996).
Selective comparison occurs when a person suddenly discovers a nonobvious
relationship between new and old information.
Guilford’s approach introduces the concept of divergent thinking as the central
feature of creative personality characterized by fluency, that is, by the number of
relevant ideas; flexibility, the ability to generate qualitatively different ideas; and
originality and elaboration, the ability to develop ideas (Guilford, 1967). Guilford’s
approach became the basis for the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT)
(2018), which has had a strong impact on research on creativity from the point of
view of its product. Leikin and her research group (Leikin et al., 2009) introduced
these ideas into mathematics education research using the criteria of fluency,
flexibility, and originality. Fluency refers to the number of solutions to a problem as
well as the pace of solving produced by an individual. Flexibility refers to the
number of solutions using different methods, while originality is measured by
insight-based or unconventionality/conventionality of the solution in relation to the
full sample of participating students (Leikin, 2009).
Naturally, each approach determines a different pedagogy and different research
techniques. Mann (2006) and Moruzzi (2021) point to the research difficulties aris-
ing from the multiple definitions of creativity. Our aim is to identify the concerns
166 B. Czarnocha
arising in classroom teaching choices and pedagogies because of these differences.

Teachers’ intent on facilitating creativity in their classroom will have to choose
whether to facilitate the development of creative originality through the development
of fluency and flexibility or through the originality of the structural insight.
Depending on the goal, the teacher will choose the definition of creativity and gear
the pedagogy together with the types of problems necessitated by that approach. A
teacher might question the pedagogical utility of such an arbitrariness. It would
make sense if each approach described a different aspect of creativity. In such a
case, research is needed to better understand the relationship between these two
approaches.
Moreover, it could be argued that different aspects of creativity appear in differ-
ent student populations. For example, in a standard mathematics classroom in an
urban community college neither definition is useful for facilitating creativity or
assessing its depth. This is because most first-year students require a great deal of
mathematics remediation and hence are neither fluent nor flexible in their mathe-
matical thinking. Yet we, their math instructors, know they are creative.
On the other hand, the Gestalt approach, with its four stages, is hard to control
within the classroom curriculum and does not offer much guidance on how to assess
the insight of illumination. The comments here lead naturally to the subtlety of the
relationship between creativity and learning, given that different student populations
might respond better to different manifestations and different aspects of creativity.
8.3 Creativity and Learning
Surprisingly, our examination of the literature yielded few studies on the relation-
ship between creativity and learning within the general philosophy of creativity,
indicating that this topic has not yet reached the attention of philosophers. By
contrast, creativity in the field of psychology has several pathways in that direction,
the most interesting for us being the work of Kaufman and Beghetto (2009). They
address common ways of classifying creativity through C-creativity (called also
H-creativity, which focuses on creativity that has had an impact on society at large)
and c-creativity (called also P-creativity, which impacts primarily an individual
thinker but not necessarily the society).
The authors isolate mini-creativity out of c-creativity claiming that creative
insights of students as they learn new concepts or make a new metaphor is overlooked
in the world of little-c. This new category of mini-creativity “was designed to
encompass creativity inherent in the learning process” p (3). The authors give an
example of a young child’s mini-c creativity, who stated she wants to be a “mushroom
princess” when she grows up. The child’s insight here was a combination of two
things she valued: mushrooms (probably because her parent is a mycologist, or
someone who studies mushrooms) and princesses. In the words of Czarnocha and
Baker (2021), it is clear that the creative insight of the child took place within the
bisociative frame (see below) between the two components mentioned. Thus, mini-c
represents for the authors creativity present in the learning process. Kaufman and
Beghetto (2009) also isolate also a Pro-c creativity from representing the
developmental and effortful progression little-c creativity (that has not yet attained
Big-C status).
To clarify the relationship between learning and creativity to the needs of math-
ematics education, we will start by posing three basic questions: Is there creativity
in learning? Is there learning in creativity? Can creativity be taught?
The second question is the easiest to answer in the pure affirmative. By pure
affirmative, I mean “nothing but…” namely that creativity of Aha! moment in
mathematics is nothing but learning, in fact, conceptual learning.
Yerushalmy (2009) observes that discussions of creativity and curriculum take
place independently of each other; quite often, they do not even share the same
lexicon. In other words, creativity and curriculum (the organization of learning in
mathematics classroom) are two essentially unconnected matrices of thought. The
theory of creativity, which we propose in the further reaches of this chapter, looks
upon such a pair of matrices as a bisociative frame: a frame within which creative
insights have larger chance to emerge. The creative insights may connect elements
of both the discourse of creativity and the discussion of learning within the given
curriculum.
The central question here is how can we connect such two matrices of thought so
that a student’s creativity develops simultaneously with learning? That question
might be easier to answer if we focus on the creativity of Aha! moment. According
to Koestler (1964), this is a spontaneous leap of insight which connects two or more
unconnected matrices of discourse by unearthing hidden analogies.1
Note that if indeed the Aha! moment insight connects unconnected matrices, it
participates in the process of a thinking schema construction. In other words, the
Aha! moment is the act of thought through which understanding expresses itself by
building a new conceptual connection. Consequently, it is the element of conceptual
learning, a term Simon et al. (2004) introduced recently. We see that creativity of an
Aha! moment is closely related to the development of conceptual understanding.
Now, we need to ask an inverse question, what kind of learning can engender a
creative Aha! moment? Of course, there is a related question of why we would like
to engender such a moment of creativity in the classroom, or alternatively what is its
value in the classroom? The answer to this question is discussed later.
The second and third questions above are connected to each other. If creativity
can be taught and the object of teaching is learning, then we should be able to find
a lot of creativity in learning. But we do not. And that is the second point of
contention between creativity and learning: how to recognize the possibility of
1
Unconnected matrices of discourse called also unconnected frames of reference are two uncon-
nected ways of thinking which get connected through the Aha! moment. Quite known example of
such two matrices can be found in Archimedes’ Aha! moment “Eureka” where one matrix of dis-
course was geometry and the other, the discourse connected with taking bath in a bathtub. Both
matrices being originally unconnected, became connected through the Aha! Moment which cre-
ated the new buoyancy law.
168 B. Czarnocha
creativity at a given moment and how to promote it in the classroom so that the
presence of creative processes is maximized. This idea is one of the unresolved
issues in our profession despite our increased understanding of the influence of
problem solving, inquiry, and discovery methods. While these three approaches
have been introduced into mathematics classrooms for at least two or three last
decades, the reports of their long-term introduction are still lacking, possibly
because of the absence of understanding along the interphase of creativity with
curriculum design. The question asked of teachers at that point is how to recognize
those areas of the daily mathematics curriculum where a possibility for creative
insight may emerge and what to do with it once it emerges.
Nevertheless, one of the most difficult obstacles on the creative pathways along
the curriculum is simply habit: our habitual nature that can turn every new skill we
learn into an automatic habit. And the more automatic, the better because it can be
enacted more precisely and without thinking in a critical situation. The problem is
that we tend to transfer its role beyond the authentically critical situations. In that
form, the habit becomes the obstacle for the creative act, which is essentially a
spontaneous one. Davis (2011) asserts that barriers are blocks, internal or external,
that either inhibit creative thinking and inspiration or else prevent innovative ideas
from being accepted and implemented.
Most barriers result from learning. They may originate with a person’s family,
peer group, community, educational environment, or from others in the culture or
business organizations. We try to imbue our students with the reasoning skills and
the steps of algorithms, often closing at the same time the space available for the
creative act.
Habits and their relationship with originality are of utmost importance for
Koestler (1964):
Matrices vary from fully automatized skills to those with a high degree of plasticity; but
even the latter are controlled by rules of the game which function below the awareness.
These silent codes can be regarded as condensation of learning into habit. Habits are
indispensable core of stability and ordered behaviour; they also tend to become mechanized
and to reduce man to the status of a conditioned automaton. The creative act, by connecting
previously unrelated [possibly habitual] dimensions of experience, enables him [or her] to
attain to a higher level of mental evolution. It is an act of liberation – the defeat of habit by
originality. (p.96)
That contradiction between habit and originality as expression of spontaneous cre-

ativity needs to be understood very clearly and taken into account if we want to
focus education on creativity and innovation. To some degree, it is our conviction of
and attachment to the fundamental role of reason that is possibly one the strongest
forces which inhibit the occurrence of the creative act by placing reasoning
necessarily before or during the act of creation. For example, recent changes in the
typology of thought from the standard Bloom taxonomy to the revised one create
such an obstacle. The pyramid of the old Bloom taxonomy has a synthesis step
followed by evaluation as the top stage, whereas the revised Bloom taxonomy has
evaluation first followed by creativity (instead of synthesis). In other words,
conscious evaluation comes before the creative process in general, which may
severely limit the spontaneous aspect of creativity.
On the other hand, the creativity of an Aha! moment depends to some degree on
the conscious formation of knowledge before the illumination, in the preparation
stage. The fundamental question is this: How much conscious preparation through
curriculum design is necessary to facilitate the insight? Moruzzi (2021) reminds us
that a creative process is a process of exploration, which does not necessarily
demand expertise and self-education but rather, can simply evoke everyday
psychological abilities such as capacity of observation and of making analogies (p.7).
Let us remember that aha! moments come not only in problem solving but in any
learning that may lead to progress in understanding as opposed to exercising
understanding by applying it to similar mathematical situations. A case in point is
recurring concerns about teaching to the test, which through its pressure and failings
stifle creativity (Lim, 2010).
A similar concern arises during the discussion on the nature of creative insight,
the Aha! moment. Whereas some researchers see Aha! moments intrinsically
connected with reasoning, others see the insight as, quite possibly, emptied of
conscious rational content. A good example of such situation is described in
(Czarnocha & Baker, 2021; Chap. 13), when a young student grasps the possible
simplification of the division of fractions with the same denominator yet has no idea
why it works. It takes several prompts of the researchers to lead her to understanding.
Similarly, Poincare, when describing his famous Aha! moments, tells us he sud-
denly knew it, but the process of verification (explicit conscious understanding
through mathematical reasoning) took him several hours of work after that and only
after he returned home. Poincare (1914) asserts,“It never happens that unconscious
work supplies a ready-made result of a lengthy calculation in which we have only to
apply the fixed rules…All that we can hope from these inspirations, which are the
fruits of unconscious work, is to obtain points of departure for such calculations. As
for calculations themselves, they must be made in the second period of conscious
work, which follows the inspiration and in which the results of inspiration are
verified, and the consequences deduced.” (p.62–63).
Wallas (2014, p.50) offers the following thought: Many people would agree that
any attempt to control the thought process at this point (the moment of illumination
and its neighborhood in time) will always do more harm than good. We can ask,
what is that knowledge we get during the illumination stage when we do not yet
understand explicitly how it works? We just know it does. Poincare uses the French
word sensibilite, which accordingly to Wallas is extremely ambiguous (p.34).
Instead, Wallas (p.47) directs our attention to the “‘fringe of consciousness’ which
surrounds our ‘focal’ consciousness as the Sun’s ‘corona’ surrounds the disk of full
luminosity” to which he gives a special name of intimation (p.48). Admittedly,
Wallas’s main goal in introducing the term is to describe the sensation leading up
to the illumination (which in the hands of S.-Smith (2015) became the new stage in
the Walla/Hadamard theory of stages). Wallas continues, “This fringe conscious-
ness may last up to the flash instance, may accompany it, and in some cases may
continue beyond that.” In such a case, intimation can be an excellent point of
departure for calculations in the verification stage with certain though unclear
anticipation for its results.
170 B. Czarnocha
These considerations bring us to one of the oldest problems in the philosophy of

creativity, the relationship between creativity and rational thinking. Paul and
Kaufman (2013) remind us that Plato’s Socrates saw great poets as being divinely
inspired by the Muses in a state of possession that exhibits kind of madness.
Aristotle, in contrast, characterized the work of a poet as a rational, goal-oriented
activity of making (poesis) (p.3).
On the other hand, Nietzsche (1999) saw the tragic poetry of ancient Greece as
being born out of a rare cooperation between the Dionysian spirit of ecstatic
intoxication and the Apollonian spirit of sober restrain, which tempers chaos with
order and form (p.4). In light of our previous discussion, intimation and illumination
might be that cooperation between the ecstatic intuition and sober reasoning,
especially if we consider the emotional impact of the Aha! moment that often
accompanies it (Koestler, 1964; Liljedahl, 2004).
8.4 Summary
In presenting this complex relationship between creativity and learning, we can eas-
ily see where to find learning in creativity. The bigger challenge of how to induce
creativity from learning is more complicated. The discussion has touched on the
difficulty of the interphase of creativity and curriculum that led to the habits
developed through curriculum and in particular the habit of rational thinking as
obstacles for the successful facilitation of creativity. We are led to the age-old
question of the relationship between creativity and rationality, the clarification of
which is necessary, in our opinion, for its smooth composition in the mathematics
curriculum.
8.5 Creativity and Its Value
Let us remember the original description of creativity by Paul and Kaufman (2013),
who end their statement by claiming “…it must also be of value.” Boden’s (2004)
characterization of creativity as the “ability to come up with ideas or artefacts which
are new, surprising and valuable” reinforces the concept of value, suggesting at the
same time the question “of value for whom?”
In response, Gaut (2018) introduces several criteria to get to the concept; he
divides it into instrumental and intrinsic value. Intrinsic value, for Gaut, is to be
valuable as an end or to be valuable for its own sake. Instrumental value then is the
value of the means of creativity. For example, the value of creative cooking is to
produce not only unusual but also good food; or the instrumental value of a scientific
idea such as quantum mechanical “entangled states” created by Schrodinger is the
possibility and emergent reality of teleportation immortalized 60 years ago captain
James Kirk in the science fiction Star Trek through his “Beam me up, Scottie!”
What is the value of creativity for us in mathematics education? Again, it depends

for whom? For us as teachers to teach a creative person is very pleasant and
enlightening. We can establish intellectual contact with the student, experience
pleasure when a creative student comes up with a new solution or new understanding.
As teachers, we would like to find the means to help the student flourish to the
maximum. Here is another site for creativity, that of the teacher who needs to design
a problem, a hint (or learning environment) that is adequate for the high degree of
student creativity. For a student in mathematics, this provides a very strong influence
in several dimensions (Czarnocha & Baker, 2021; Chap. 10). Here we just quote
simple expressions of happiness with the moment of creativity, “It felt great,” “I was
so relieved; I could barely contain my happiness,” “That was the best feeling,” “I
never knew I could feel so good while doing math,” “The joy I felt was like no
other,” and “It made me feel like I could do anything.”
Simply, creativity feels good. Is it an intrinsic or extrinsic value? Personally, I
would see creativity as an intrinsic value, remembering that it may produce good
and bad objects. For example, creativity involved in the understanding the
mathematical/physical structure of an atom and energetic possibilities contained
there led to nuclear power plants and the nuclear bombs. Here creativity in
mathematics and mathematics education encounters ethics. To deal with that
problem, Gaut (2018) introduces the distinction between something being good, as
distinct from something being good of its kind. In that sense, nuclear bombs are
very good as bombs but certainly they are not good, period (p.128). That of course
suggests that judging the value of creativity by its product is not very useful as the
manifestation of that value. This realization leads to the concept of conditional
creativity. Following Kant (1993), we can call things that are valuable only under
some circumstances as “conditionally valuable”, while those valuable under all
circumstances – “unconditionally valuable.” This implies that creativity is
conditionally valuable since its products may or may not be valuable. Thus, the
sense of feeling good as a result of a creative act is an unconditional value, while the
creativity involved in understanding the structure of an atom is conditional because
it depends on what product is created. The discussion of ethical dimension of
creativity in mathematics education encounters closely related discussion of Ernest
(2018), who analyzes more general problem of ethics of mathematics, where he had
offered “the metaphor that mathematics has two faces, good and bad.” Similarly, we
have seen that creativity can have two faces and the conditional/unconditional
creativity criterion introduced by Gaut (2018) distinguishes between those two
faces. Ernest points out to the role of social image of mathematics as experienced by
many learners’ image of mathematics and its effect on success or failure in the
subject. Below we demonstrate the role of creativity of Aha! moment in overcoming
the sense of failure through acting upon students’ extrinsic motivation.
We see the sense of pride and confidence: In reflecting upon this Aha! moment,
I feel the sense of pride that I accomplished this mathematical idea all by myself,
“The Aha! moment is inspiring!” It makes students believe that they solved the
question through reasoning and deep thought and inspires him or her to seek more
of these moments to obtain sort of confidence and further knowledge.
172 B. Czarnocha
Clearly, creativity as experienced by authors of those two fragments is extrinsic

as it reveals products of self-belief and self-confidence within the experiencer
psyche or inner life. Are those products valuable unconditionally or conditionally?
I think “the sense of pride” in the accomplishment of solving a classroom problem
is quite unconditional and I would say intrinsic, while the inspiration to seek more
of these moments, might be extrinsic conditional depending on the circumstances
within which they will occur and product they will create. According to Ernest
(2018), Davis (1988) suggested there should be a Hippocratic Oath for mathemati-
cians. Since doing mathematics to large degree depends on creativity, maybe the
discussion of the Hippocratic Oath should take place in the mathematics classrooms
together with the emphasis on two faces of creativity.
It is interesting that one creative experience can produce things that are both
intrinsic and extrinsic, conditionally and unconditionally valuable. In light of the
difficulty of establishing the value of creativity, Hills and Bird (2018) question the
presence of “value” in the very definition of creativity. Rather than value, they
suggest that we focus deeper attention on originality in the definition.
Coming back to the creativity in our classes of mathematics, we educators feel
and recognize the value of our students’ as well as our, teachers’ creativity. The
examples above demonstrate the benefits of creativity on our students. However, to
the author of remedial and undergraduate mathematics course, the most precious
value of Aha! moment creativity is its influence on the attitudes and beliefs about
mathematics. DeBellis and Goldin (2006) have introduced the concept of a student
bonding with mathematics while developing a more “intimate” relationship with
and knowledge of the subject. Consequently, for our profession, which is constantly
mired by the difficulties of attitudes while teaching the subject, that value of bonding
with mathematics through creativity is of highest and in my opinion extrinsic degree.
8.6 Is Creativity Measurable?
Measuring the depth of creative experience has not been addressed by the volumes
of Philosophy of Creativity discussed here, namely, Paul and Kaufman (2013) and
Gaut and Kieran (2018). This is a relatively a new theme, which arises as the result
of dissatisfaction with psychometric approaches, notably the ones promoted by
Guilford (1967) and others. The new articles appearing in professional journals are
only partially related to creativity. Piffer (2000) argues that the difficulties in the
measuring of creativity are due to the absence of clarity concerning its definition.
Piffer (2000) formulates a new framework based on novelty, appropriateness,
and impact within which creativity is measurable. Basing himself on the new
definition, the author argues that “Divergent Thinking, Remote Associates or some
personality scales can be considered neither the only components of the creative
process/cognition/potential nor ‘creativity tests’.” Finally, he suggests that the
creativity of a person cannot be accessed directly and can only be assessed through
self-report questionnaires. Below we discuss how using the progress of understanding
as the measure of the change of the depth of knowledge obtained during the Aha!
moment can give us a direct assessment tool of creativity in mathematics. Elizabeth
Kaplunov (2016), a recent PhD calls upon students in the UK: Surely between all
the students in the UK, we can find a new way to harness and assess this brainpower,
capacity, imagination, resourcefulness, inspiration creativity (whatever you want to
call it). Let us measure creativity in creative ways!
Moruzzi (2021), on the other hand, tells us that “the question of how to measure
creativity is arguably under-discussed in the field...creating a serious gap in our
capacity to delve into the analysis of creativity depths.”
8.7 Why Is It Important to Measure Creativity?
Even the traditional view of creativity as the product of a “genius” or extremely

talented people in arts and science involves an intuitive assessment of that work.
When we intuitively detect the impact of it in ourselves, this work, this painting, that
music affects me deeper than this one, or this solution is more elegant because of its
creative component compared to that one. Of course, these assessments are
subjective and vague. Nonetheless, their existence reminds us that measuring cre-
ativity is present within our inner experience. For Moruzzi (2021), it is important to
find a way “to measure the distance that sets performance of machine learning sys-
tems apart from human creativity, if there is any.” For those of us in mathematics
education, measuring creativity is as essential as the clarity of its definition, due
primarily to our need to assess the depth of progress of a student’s creative thoughts
and actions or depth of knowledge (DoK).
It is important for us to know how to translate a student’s creative discovery into
general classroom knowledge to be shared even though creativity of a person at a
given moment might be a fleeing feeling or thought that disappears because of
external factors. For this reason, it could be very useful to measure creativity with
the help of tools that do not depend on external-to-creativity factors but on the inner
structure of creativity itself, which does not undermine creativity or affect it during
measurement. The need for such an approach increased significantly once our
profession understood that creativity is not limited to the very gifted and talented
only but is within the reach of “everyman,” using Boden’s (2004) characterization.
In mathematics education, research and practice of creative teaching attention to
that difference is expressed in the division into H-creativity, historical creativity
which have influenced society, and P-creativity, personal creativity of an individual.
We also use the similar distinction between C-, and c-creativity.
Moruzzi is using three features of creativity to substantiate the approach: prob-
lem solving, evaluation, and the feature of naivety. The main problem solving qual-
ity taken here into account is the “connection-making” process which “consists in
drawing links between apparently disconnected pieces of knowledge and in explor-
ing novel paths towards the successful conclusion of the problem-solving process.”
Evaluation feature, what Moruzzi (2021 p.7) sees as the “ability to assess the
process and to know ‘when to stop’.” This feature is especially important during the
174 B. Czarnocha
trail-and-error solving process when the learner or an investigator adjusts her or his
thinking, which leads to the solution. That process is of course akin to the divergent
thinking of Guilford, (1967). Naivety feature “relates to various aspects that in the
literature have a place among the core traits of creativity, unconscious thought pro-
cessing, challenging domain norms, independence from rigid structures of thought.”
Moruzzi points out that from the point of view naivety “A creative process is a pro-
cess of exploration, which does not necessarily demand expertise and self-education
but, rather can simply evoke everyday psychological abilities such as the capacity
for of observation and of making analogies.” One of the central qualities of naivety
feature is “lack of previous exposure to the situation at hand.” The lack of previous
exposure to the situation at hand is one of the central condition in the process of
facilitation creativity of Aha! moment.
Moruzzi’s proposal is to see creativity of the individual as proportional to the
“sum” of naivety, novelty and the distance of connections, evaluative ability, and
efficiency. The proposal emphasizes the analysis of the creative process, in distinc-
tion to widely employed Torrance tests approach, which focuses on the product. We
have argued that focus on the process is especially useful for regular students for
whom fluency and flexibility in mathematics are not fully there, but who nonethe-
less display creativity.
8.8 New Theory of Creativity in Mathematics Education
Should creativity be facilitated in mathematics classes? Can it be done in all classes

or just in some? Can it be done at all?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then as we discussed in Sections I and III,
this situation requires a definition, theory, and practice of creativity that suitable is
for the task. Prabhu and Czarnocha (2014) have already proposed the definition of
the act of creation as formulated by Koestler (1964). To a certain degree, this defini-
tion addresses the topics we raised earlier in our discussion. Before we proceed,
however, I would like to sketch our motivation for this work. While working at a
community college in South Bronx, it has become very clear to me that the most
common approaches to creativity in our profession, which are based fully or partly
on the Guilford/Torrance approach, do not work well with urban college students.
Most first-year students coming to such colleges require remediation in mathe-
matics. Many, in addition, lack both fluency and flexibility. Yet as we have observed,
they can be highly creative in the subject. The question thus arose on how to identify
and describe their mathematical creativity. One favorable circumstance for this proj-
ect has become the relatively recent realization of the distinction between C- and
c-creativity in the profession (Kaufman and Beghetto 2009; Boden 2004; Hadamard,
1945). c-creativity is understood as bringing insights that are new and original to the
thinker but not necessarily to anyone else. That allowed us to understand that any
knowledge obtained or a solution to a problem done by a student or as Koestler
would have said “within non-tutored” setting can be a minor creative act. As a result,
the investigation of the degree of the progress of understanding created during the
insight is a proper measure of creativity in mathematics classroom. That turned
our attention to Aha! moments in our classrooms.
The first investigation of their occurrence in our classroom was done by Prabhu
(2016), who observed a significant increase in their number as well as the impact
they made on students in the class led by her new pedagogy.
Consider Chamberlin (2013), who states the following: Missing is information
on what initiatives are in place to develop and facilitate mathematical creativity in
underserved and under-identified populations. This type of discussion would be
informative to the field of gifted education and counter the criticism that field is not
inclusive. (p. 856)
Moreover, Sriraman’s assertion that “there is almost little, or no literature related
to the synthetic abilities of “ordinary” individuals” (p. 120) is a strong confirmation
of the fact that until recently the knowledge about creativity of so-called under-
served and underrepresented student population has been nil. Because Aha!moment
insights take place among the general population in different circumstances, the
theory of creativity of Aha! moment can be seen as the theory of “creativity of and
for all” (Prabhu and Czarnocha, 2014; Czarnocha, 2022b). That is why we are aim-
ing at the definition, theory, and practice of creativity that fits the creativity of
“everyman,” of rank-and-file as well as of gifted students.
8.8.1 Definition
Bisociation (creativity of Aha! moment/Eureka experience) is the spontaneous leap

of insight that connects two unconnected frames of reference (matrices of thought)
by unearthing a hidden analogy (p. 45).
But what is a theory in mathematics education? According to Redford (2008),
such a theory contains the following:
• A system P of principles delineating the frontier of the universe of discourse.
• A methodology M that includes the data interpretation that is supported by P.
• A set Q of paradigmatic research question.
We will discuss these points heuristically. Those details may be found in
Czarnocha and Baker (2021; Conclusions). We are now directing our attention to
the definition of bisociation. We see that it contains several tightly related concepts:
spontaneity, process of connecting and the two unconnected frames of reference
that get connected by the insight. The definition also describes the process of
connecting and the product of connection – the conceptual bridge between
unconnected matrices of thought. We abstract here the bisociative frame, which is
the two unconnected frames of reference within which the Aha! moment takes or
might take place, as one of the basic principles of the theory.
176 B. Czarnocha
The universe of the bisociation theory has a several dimensions in mathematics

education:
• In its relation with student affect and its relationship with conation (Goldin, 2021).
• In its cognitive dimension, it studies the intrinsic structure of creativity as the
process of understanding through the development of the schema of thinking
accomplished during the Aha! moment.
• In its learning dimension, it studies the changes of understanding mathematical
concepts occasioned by Aha! moments, the relationship between internaliza-
tion and interiorization (Baker, this volume) and the role of creativity in
abstraction.
• In its networking theories’ dimension, it investigates the process of integration of
different theories of learning through which bisociation expresses itself in terms
of the host theory.2 The notion of a bisociative frame turned out to be a powerful
creativity “detector” within different (constructivists) theories of learning. It
identifies sites of heightened possibility of creativity within Tzur’s (2021) R*AF
theory. It also helped formulate dynamics of creativity within different stages of
Mason’s attention theory (Mason & Czarnocha, 2021), and it coordinated a biso-
ciation process with the reflective abstraction of Piaget’s approach of showing
that creativity can occur on every level of development of student thinking
(Baker, 2016). In this volume, Baker (2023) shows where bisociation can be
found within Vygotsky’s concept of internalization, providing an extremely
important unifying connection between the Piagetian and Vygotskian approaches
to learning.
• The connection between different theories of learning analyzed according to net-
working theory indicates that creativity can be identified in each constructive
research and teaching approach, responding this way to a somewhat scattered
approach to creativity in learning indicated by Mann (2006) and Moruzzi (2021).
Moreover, it formulates new research questions on creativity within the terms
and structures of the host theories.
• Directing our attention on the process of schema construction as the product of
creativity, we see that the definition suggests a theory of schema development as
the approach to understand the depth of inside (DoK) reached during an Aha!
moment. We used the well-known Triad of Piaget and Garcia (1987) as a tool of
assessment. This tool allows the use of the three stages of the Triad: -intra, -inter,
and -trans to relatively precisely gauge the degree of progress of understanding
within the insight (Czarnocha & Baker, 2021, Chap. 4). The information to that
degree was obtained through students’ written descriptions of mathematical con-
cepts entering into insight followed by student interviews. This approach fulfils
an important condition stated by Morruzzi of focusing solely on the intrinsic
qualities of bisociation without in any way disturbing the creative process.
2
We discuss here the relationship between the new bisociation theory of creativity proposed and
different theories of learning called host theories. This relationship is understood in terms of the
networking of theories approach formulated by Prediger and Bickner-Ahsbahs (2014). The host
theory, an example of which is Tzur’s R*AF theory (2004) mentioned in the next paragraph, is the
theory where bisociative frame can be expressed within concepts of that theory itself.
8.9 Summary of Arguments
The central question of this chapter is the following: What can the practice of and
research in creativity of mathematics education contribute to the philosophy of
creativity in mathematics education and possibly to the philosophy of creativity in
general?
We began our discussion with a known problem in our field, namely, the multi-
tude of definitions of creativity. We also pointed out how different definitions focus
on different aspects of creativity and how different student population might be
more sensitive to a particular definition. That, of course, suggests a research ques-
tion on the relationship between different definitions. From the point of view of the
standard mathematics classroom, neither definition adequately addresses the facili-
tation of creativity.
We also pointed out that the theme creativity and learning has not yet attracted
attention from the general philosophy of creativity; however, it does contain within
itself deep and basic issues. Interestingly enough, whereas we did not have much
difficulty in identifying learning in the context of creativity, the reverse question of
identifying creativity in the learning process revealed serious obstacles leading to
the discussion of automatic habits, particularly the habit of overemphasized
rationality.
This discussion underscored the need to finding a balance between the standards
and habits of learning and the requirements of creative learning environment. Closer
analysis of Poincare’s comments (1914) suggests that Wallas’s intimation discussed
by Sadler-Smith as the fifth stage of the Gestalt approach might also carry a
substantial value not only before but also after the insight illumination.
Our discussion of the value of creativity was undertaken within the dichotomy of
intrinsic and extrinsic value suggested by Gaut (2018). We also incorporated the
concept of conditional and nonconditional value suggesting the possibility of
integrating the elements of ethics while facilitating creativity in the classroom.
The pedagogical classroom experience suggests that the main value of creative
insight is the bonding with mathematics through the positive feelings the insight
induces. The last theme undertaken in this chapter is that of measuring creativity or
assessing the depth of the progress of understanding reached during the insight.
This theme does not yet appear in the general philosophy of creativity; however,
forcefully including creativity in mathematics classes suggests the need to measure
it. We bring forward Moruzzi’s thinking (2021) on the subject who points to the
quality of naivety, which is close to the conditions we create in the classroom to
facilitate the insight. The discussion of measurement of creativity must consider
that different measures might be necessary for different student populations.
In the final pages of this chapter, we discuss the details of the Koestler’s (1964)
definition of bisociation or creativity of the Aha! moment and Eureka experience as
the basis of the new theory of creativity in mathematics education. We characterize
the theory with the help of criteria established by Redford (2008) in the context of
networking theories approach. A main component of the theory is the bisociative
178 B. Czarnocha
frame, which enables a person to establish a close relationship between creativity

and constructivist and socio-cultural learning theories. That coordination can be a
significant help in facilitating creativity through different pathways of learning.
8.10 Philosophical Conclusions
What issues and qualities of creativity in mathematics education have been brought
forth by discussion of related fundamental problems in mathematics education?
Paul and Kaufman inform us that the adjective “creative” is seen as the descrip-
tion of a process, product, and a person – a creator. We summarize the answer to the
question above by taking these three components of the subject as the initial
framework underlying at the same time discovered connections between them.
The section “What Is Creativity?” brought forth the many ways through which
we approach it; however, instead of seeing it as the obstacle for research and
teaching practice we see it as different “cuts” or different components of creativity,
each addressing its different aspects. Moreover, each “cut” determines different
research questions, different pedagogical approaches in the classroom, and different
measurement techniques, each of them providing useful though often different
knowledge about creativity. Philosophically that translates into a wide avenue of
research investigating the inner structure of creativity.
Such investigations could be conducted using recently formulated networking
theories approach (Bikner-Ahsbahs & Prediger, 2014). We see in here an important
connection between the ontological question of what is the being called creativity
with the epistemological question of how do we gain knowledge of it? One new
concept brought forth by our field, Mathematics Education to Philosophy of
Creativity, is the question of its measurement. Here we immediately want to assert
that although the concept of measurement in psychology very easily associates
itself with positivistic philosophy and psychometric methods, which of course are
used in the context Guilford/Torrance/Leikin approaches, we also bring here a very
different approach whose aim is to assess the depth of creative endeavor (Moruzzi,
2021). We use here Piaget-based techniques of cognitive developmental psychol-
ogy, which allows us to assess the degree of the depth of knowledge gained by the
creativity of Aha! moment. This method allows us to solve Leikin (2016) knowledge-
creativity paradox formulated as follows: “Creativity is a necessary condition for
knowledge construction, whereas knowledge is a necessary condition for creative
processing” (p.19). Knowledge necessary for creative processing is different from
knowledge constructed through the act of creation. Knowledge is different in the
degree of connectedness and therefore in the degree of conceptual maturity of the
creator. (Czarnocha & Baker, 2021; p.281). In other words, considerations within
mathematics education are adding a new useful quality to the nature of being called
creativity, to the ontology of the concept – its depth.
One of the most significant issues brought forth by several later sections of this
chapter is that the nature of creativity in mathematics is the same for the mature
inventor and for a student solving a problem in algebra or geometry. As Hadamard

(1945) reminds us the difference between them is that of scope, possibly of the
depth and not of the creative process. Similarly, more detailed considerations of
Boden (2004) or mathematics education researchers (Shriki, 2010) have brought
forth the concept of C- and c- creativity or corresponding with it division into
H-historical and P- personal creativity that allows us to investigate creativity of
“rank-and-file” students or as Boden (2004) would have had it, the creativity of
“everyman.”
The questions of how to do it, what definition of creativity to use, or what is
the relationship between creativity of everyman and that of gifted and talented
students needs to be explored. The philosophy of creativity in mathematics edu-
cation could and should take the lead in this process by pointing out that creativ-
ity is the quality of us all. However, the philosophy of who is a creator does not
stop at this juncture. Is creativity a solely human endeavor? The discussion of
recent and past investigations into animal creativity represented in this volume
by Thomas Rick’s chapter, extended by Boden (2004) into, on the one hand,
biological creativity of life and, on the other hand, to the recently formulated
computer creativity suggests a possibility of a different answer. Either creativity
is not just a human quality or we have not yet identified that aspect of creativity
which is uniquely human.
The section “Creativity and Learning” followed by the last two sections on mea-
surability and new theory hide within themselves epistemological aspects of cre-
ativity. How do we know the being called creativity? How do we recognize its
process? A central issue is that we cannot fully predict when creative process will
commence or how creative its product might be. Thus, the methods of knowing
creativity have an irreducible probabilistic base. And yet, we generally know it, at
least in mathematics classroom, when something, we call creativity takes place. So
we have a certain intuition of creativity that can express itself in many ways; for
Poincare it was unconscious aesthetics. And then we choose a certain definition of
creativity with the help of how we organize our investigations/exploration into its
being. Having understood circumstances when it sporadically occurs, we can
reproduce and refine them to increase the probability of its future occurrence. This
is one way of knowing creativity, by continuously interacting with it through the
cycles of recognizing it intuitively, by seeing and understanding it, and by increasing
the probability of its occurrence to investigating the results. Note that the whole
process of knowing creativity depends essentially upon the choice of the definitions,
which might be quite different, yet each describing certain of its aspects.
Consequently, to explore epistemology of creativity in mathematics education we
have to make a profound shift of attention from creativity per se to different aspects
of creativity, its different “cuts” irreducibly connected to the psychological pro-
cesses of learning and knowing.
This sense of irreducible connectiveness is reinforced when we reflect upon the
Koestler’s definition of the act of creation as the spontaneous leap of insight that
connects unconnected matrices of thought (Koestler, 1964 p.45). We have here psy-
chology of the spontaneous leap of insight and the element of philosophy of being
180 B. Czarnocha
connecting the unconnected matrices of thought. These considerations suggest that

the unit of analysis here is not within creativity nor psychology but should be situ-
ated at the very act of creation itself which connects both domains.
The presented new theory of creativity in the last section offers an example of the
approach to creativity in mathematics education, which addresses several raised
issues. Its central philosophical significance is hidden in the concept of the
bisociative frame, one of the main concepts of the theory abstracted from the
definition of the act of creation as the two unconnected matrices of thought that get
(or might get) connected during the insight. It is our epistemological tool, the
instrument with the help of which we can identify areas of possible creativity in
different theories of learning present in mathematics education. The ability of the
bisociative frame to identify creative possibilities within different approaches to
learning suggests a general question in front of the philosophy of creativity: should
not creativity be taken as the foundation of learning in mathematics classrooms?
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Chapter 9
A Framework for Creative Insights Within
Internalization of Mathematics
William Baker
9.1 Introduction
One explanation for the dominant role of constructivism in mathematics education

is its clearly defined methodology of research in which the researcher acts as a
teacher and embodies discovery learning, i.e., provides minimal verbal explanations
to the student. In constructivist theory, understanding a problem situation begins
with an attempt to assimilate its information into existing schemes. Acts of accom-
modation, viewed as based upon creative moments of insight, may occur when a
problem cannot readily be assimilated into an existing scheme. Piaget describes the
mechanism of accommodation, which he terms reflective abstraction, as occurring
through reflection upon an existing scheme or solution activity in a problem-solving
environment. The primary objective of this article is to use the theoretical frame-
work of Koestler (1964) integrated with the work of constructivist theory, based
upon Piaget, to analyze moments of insight within social discourse, i.e., the inter-
nalization of Vygotsky (1978).
In previous work, the bisociative framework for creativity Koestler (1964) has
been translated into or integrated with that developed by Piaget and Garcia (1989)
to analyze acts of accommodation (Baker, 2016). This earlier translation work (the
integrated frame) was used to analyze individual moments of creative insight lead-
ing to the formation of new schemes. The integrated frame was extended to include
the foundational type of reflective abstraction known as interiorization (Baker,
2021a; Czarnocha & Mason, 2021).
The first objective of this article is to review and modify the integrated frame to
analyze students’ moments of insight, leading to concept development, and accom-
modation, what Koestler refers to as growth in understanding, within social dis-
course. Learners struggling to internalize new content may not rate highly according
W. Baker (*)
Hostos Community College of CUNY, Bronx, NY, USA
184 W. Baker
to the measures of assessment associated with creative and gifted individuals, such
as flexibility, fluency, proficiency, or in terms of productive-divergent thinking
(Leikin & Pitta-Pantazi, 2013). That said, for such students, every moment of insight
may represent an important step. In Vygotsky’s framework, an activity that is ini-
tially viewed as externally directed becomes internal through a process of conscious
imitation. Thus, the child first imitates or performs an activity with a teacher’s assis-
tance and ultimately acts independently. This framework is ideally situated for ana-
lyzing classroom instruction, especially teacher-led discourse. However, its
drawback is that the process of internalization is not well understood. “As yet, the
barest minimum of this process is known” (Vygotsky, 1978, p.57).
A second objective of this article is to clarify the notion of constructivist peda-
gogy to support moments of insight within social discourse. Constructionism clearly
has a major influence on mathematics pedagogy, yet its implementation has been
difficult on the institutional level. One problematic issue is that the role of the
teacher managing discovery learning is unclear, or ill- defined (Baker, 2021b). One
common explanation is that professional development efforts have not been suffi-
cient to impart the essence of discovery learning. Another factor is that the strong
focus of constructivist research and pedagogy on individual reflection and abstrac-
tion simply does not resonate with the practice of teaching and learning within
social discourse. In this line of thought, the strict focus on an individual’s subjective
understanding is simply not well equipped to provide insight into the teacher’s role
in a social learning community. Thus, the second objective is to highlight the role of
the teacher in guiding students to moments of insight within the process of internal-
ization. That is in bringing the spirit of discovery embodied in constructivist meth-
odology into the daily lesson.
9.2 Theoretical Foundations
9.2.1 Matrices Codes, Schemes
Koestler’s (1964) notion of “bisociation” is used to describe moments of insight

within a diverse range of fields including humor, art, literature, math, and science.
The term bisociation is used to distinguish between associative routine thought –
exercise of understanding (assimilation), as opposed to bisociative thought existing
simultaneously in two previously unrelated frames of reference or progress in
understanding (accommodation). Koestler develops his theory of creative insight in
terms of matrices or frames of reference and the code or rules of the game that gov-
ern each matrix.
The matrix is the pattern before you, representing the ensemble of permissible moves. The
code which governs the matrix can be put into simple mathematical equations…or it can be
expressed in words. The code is the fixed invariable factor in a skill or habit, the matrix is
the variable part. The two words do not refer to different entities, they refer to different
aspects of the same activity. (p.40)
9 A Framework for Creative Insights Within Internalization of Mathematics 185
In the integrated frame, matrices correspond to schemes, which are viewed as

matrices whose codes can be expressed in a quasi-mathematical language. In con-
structivist learning, schemes represent activity that has been generalized into stable,
predictable, and repeatable activity (Confrey, 1994a, p.4). Schemes, described in
detail presently, are important in analyzing the cognitive effects of moments of
insight in the individual’s learning process. In the integrated frame, the term “code”
translates into the constructivist notion of an “invariant relationship,” which may be
understood as the conceptual reasoning that underlies solution activity. Thus, the
formation of schemes and development of concept are intertwined.
9.2.2 Blocked Non-assimilatory Situation and Discovery

of Hidden Analogy
For Koestler (1964), creative insight takes place in a blocked situation, in which the
subject does not initially have an appropriate matrix.
[The situation] still resembles in some respect other situations encountered in the past yet
contains new features or complexities which make it impossible to solve by the rules of the
game that were used in those past situations. (p.119)
In constructivist theory, this is referred to as a non-assimilatory situation, in

which the subject understands the goal in a situation but does not have an appropri-
ate scheme to assimilate the situation and thus complete the goal. Koestler describes
selective attention on previously unimportant aspects of a situation, alongside disre-
gard for other details as the foundation for moments of creative insight to resolve a
blocked situation, “selective emphasis on the relevant factors and omission of the
rest” Koestler (1964, p.72). In creativity theory more generally, selective attention
can be understood as three processes: selective encoding, in which the subject
applies consciousness attention to a previously overlooked aspects of the situation;
selective comparison, in which the subject compares previous knowledge with the
given situation; or selective combination of existing but previously unrelated aspects
within the situation (Perking, 2000; Davidson, 2002).
Koestler (1964) refers to the resolution of a blocked situation, as the result of
selective attention as the discovery of a hidden analogy: “[T]he displacement of
attention to something not previously noted, which was irrelevant in the old and is
relevant in the new context; the discovery of hidden analogies…” (p.120). Koestler
(1964) describes the search through one’s collection of possibly related matrices
leading to the discovery of a hidden analogy that will remove the block as looking
for something one does not know:
We have seen that one of the basic mechanisms of the Eureka process is the discovery of a
hidden analogy…Yet the word ‘search,’ so often used in the context of problem-solving, is
apt to create confusion because it implies that I knew what I am searching for, whereas in
fact I do not…[T]he subject looks for a clue, the nature of which he does not know except
that it should be a ‘clue’…a link to a type of problem familiar to him. Instead of looking
through a given filter-frame for an object which matches the filter, he must try out one form
186 W. Baker
after another to match the object under his nose, until he finds the frame which it fits, i.e.,
until the problem presents some familiar aspect- which is then perceived as an analogy with
past experience and allows him to come to grips with it. (pp.653–654)
In creativity research, like problem-solving research, the subject often does not
have a matrix-scheme to assimilate the situation and thus searches (selective com-
parison) to find a hidden analogy. In constructivist theory, this search leads to a
situation-activity link, which is the first component of an action scheme. The second
type of search (selective encoding) occurs after a relevant matrix has been found,
yet the subject has not learned how to use it to obtain the desired effect: “The prob-
lem in problem solving consists firstly in discovering which routine is appropriate
to the problem-what type of game is to be played, and secondly, how to play it-i.e.,
which strategy to follow, which members of the flexible matrix are to be brought
into play according to the lie of the land” (Koestler, 1964, p. 638). In constructivist
theory, this leads to an activity-effect link.
9.2.3 Bisociation
Koestler (1964) describes the mechanism of creative insight, “bisociation” as the

result of an idea, event, or concept existing or vibrating on two previous unrelated
matrices:
[T]he perceiving of a situation or idea L, in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible
frames of reference M1 and M2. The event L in which the two intersect is made to vibrate
simultaneously on two different wavelengths, as it were. While this unusual situation lasts,
L is not merely linked top one associative context, but bisociated with two. (p.35)
The effect of the bisociative vibration of concepts on two previously unrelated

matrices, during the discovery of a hidden analogy, is the transfer of thought from
one matrix to another: “The sudden transfer of a mental event with two habitually
incompatible matrices results in an abrupt transfer of the train of thought from one
associative context to another” (p.59). Thus, for Koestler (1964), the transfer of
analogic reasoning during the discovery of a hidden analogy results is the result of
a bisociative synthesis of existing matrices:
The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create
something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already
existing facts, ideas facilities, skills. The more familiar the parts, the more striking the new
whole. (p.120)
9.2.4 Understanding and Discovery
Skemp (1987) suggests that “To understand something is to assimilate it into an

appropriate schema” (p.29). However, in a blocked or non-assimilatory situation,
there is potential for growth in understanding. Sierpinska (1994) comments on the
relationship between discovery and understanding when she states “While any
invention assures understanding, the latter does not necessarily imply the former…”
(p.69). We take the distinction to be that, while understanding thought assimilation
(exercise in understanding) occurs without discovery, the process of discovery (re-
discovery) or creative insight always results in what Koestler refers to as growth in
understanding. Piaget (1977) expresses the view that growth in understanding is
based upon moments of insight:
To understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery, and such conditions must be
complied with if in the future individuals are to be formed who are capable of production
and creativity and not simply repetition. (p.20)
Here we take Piaget’s use of the phrase “to understand” as referring to accom-
modation of new information through scheme development, i.e., growth in
understanding.
9.2.5 Integrated Frame: Bisociation-Koestler
In the integrated frame, based upon the work of Koestler (1964), moments of insight
occur when an individual finds themselves in a blocked situation. Their understand-
ing of the blocked situation, and search to resolve it, is referred to as their search
matrix or M1. M1 may be a scheme or some part of a scheme that has been applied
in similar situations but is inadequate to assimilate the situation. This creates a ten-
sion between their M1 understanding of the situation and their motive to resolve it;
constructivists often refer to this as “perturbation.” The subjects’ search to under-
stand and resolve the situation may, in a moment of insight, lead them to discover a
relevant M2 matrix previously unrelated to their M1 (discovery of a hidden analogy-
selective comparison) or it may lead them to uncover a feature of their M1, previ-
ously not considered relevant (selective encoding). The uncovered or hidden features
of M1 are often properties of the objects being acted upon, that when realized direct
solution activity. These uncovered features can be understood as a matrix M2 that
emerges from the M1 matrix.
In the moment of insight, the discovered analogic matrix M2 undergoes bisocia-
tive synthesis with M1; during this process, analogical M2 reasoning transfers to
M1 directing solution activity.
During selective encoding, the uncovered matrix M2 has its genesis within
aspects of M1; in this situation, the uncovered concepts exist organically within
M1and M2 (bisociation). The conceptual relationships established during the biso-
ciation of M1 and M2 represents the birth of what Koestler (1964) would refer to as
a “pseudo-code,” i.e., the building block for a new matrix- code, that has typically
not yet been “reified” into a code (p.639). Thus, the end-product of a moment of
insight is novel activity based upon a newly formed conceptual relationship or
developing code. Note, such moments of insight take place within problem-solving
but are not the result of deductive reasoning, as the actual moment of insight is
188 W. Baker
intuitive in nature insight and has been described by Koestler (1964) as being
induced through, “putting thinking aside” (p.182).
Thus, moments of insight in the integrated frame have three defining character-
istics: the search process, the connection between M1 and M2 that leads to a transfer
of analogic thought, and finally a novel activity that is directed by the conceptual
relationship established.
9.2.6 Reflective Abstraction and the Formation

of the Action Scheme
Koestler’s frame has several weaknesses for analyzing insights leading to the devel-
opment of mathematical structure; the first is that because it is used so broadly, it is
vague, and a second related issue is the relationships between concepts, matrices,
and solution activity are not described in depth.
Piaget’s notion of reflective abstraction expresses acts of accommodation as con-
taining two parts. The first part is the projection of an existing relevant scheme into
a blocked or non-assimilatory situation. The projected scheme, and the subject’s
sense of why it is lacking in the situation their M1. The projected scheme cannot
assimilate the situation hence, it requires coordination with new aspects of the prob-
lem, selective attention to these new aspects results in concept formation and/or
discovery of new scheme (M2) that when coordinated with M1, what Piaget and
Garcia (1989) refer to as “constructive generalization,” and Koestler as bisociation,
resolves the situation.
Simon et al. (2004) consider that the two-stage notion of reflective abstraction, as
presented by Piaget, is simply not well understood and, thus, not useful in guiding
pedagogy in mathematics educational research. “It is our contention that the mecha-
nism itself is underspecified for guiding the design of instructional interventions
intended to address challenging learning problems in mathematics” (p.313). These
authors re-interpret Piaget’s notion of reflective abstraction in terms of Von
Glasersfeld’s (1995) action-scheme, which contains three parts: a situation, activity,
and its effect. The action-scheme or scheme can be expressed as two connections or
relationships, the first is the situation-activity relationship (S-A), and the second is
the activity-effect relationship . Simon et al. (2004) provide a plausible and readily
understandable metaphorical descriptions of the search process leading to an A-E
relationship, built upon the abstraction of invariant relationships:
We offer the following physical metaphor to promote an image of the records of experience
and how they are used in reflective abstraction. Each record of experience can be thought of
as being stored in a jar. Inside of each jar is a particular instance of the activity and the effect
of that activity. Each jar is labeled as to whether the record of experience inside was associ-
ated with a positive result or a negative result. In the first phase of Piaget’s reflective
abstraction, the projection phase, jars are sorted according to their labels (i.e., learners
mentally-though not necessarily consciously--compare /sort records based on the results).
In the second phase, the reflection phase, the contents of the jars that have been grouped
together are compared and patterns observed. Thus, within each subset of the records of
experience (positive versus negative results), the learner’s mental comparison of the records
allows for recognition of patterns, that is, abstraction of the relationship between activity
and effect. (p.319)
Thus, in the first, projection phase, the subject attempts solution activity based
upon a relevant but insufficient scheme M1. In the second reflection phase, the sub-
ject abstracts the invariant relationship or conceptual relationship from his previous
attempts, i.e., the A-E-dyads. This abstraction is the result of coordination between
the features of the new situation and properties of the objects being acted upon
highlighted by the inadequate effects of this solution activity.
The formation of an A-E-dyad within the transition from intuitive, or externally
directed thought to independent, “interior thought is described in Steffe (1991). His
work is summarized below and is taken as the blueprint for the constructivist notion
of “interiorization.” It is meant to understand how human cognition, historically and
individually, develops new conscious structure from our empirical reasoning ability,
i.e., our common-sense reasoning based upon our perception of the world.
9.2.7 Interiorization
The term interiorization is often used by constructivists to describe the genesis, or

birth of a process (interior scheme). While there is general agreement that interior-
ization is the result of reflection upon and abstraction of solution activity, succinct
descriptions are harder to find. Sfard (1991) credits Piaget for the following charac-
terization of an interiorized process as one that could be “carried out through [men-
tal] representations, and in order to be considered, analyzed and compared, it needs
no longer be actually performed” (Sfard, 1991, p.18). That is what is meant when
they say the A-E relationship has been abstracted or made interior. In Czarnocha
et al. (1999), activity before interiorization is referred to as taking place within an
action conception, where an action is defined as a transformation that “is a reaction
to stimuli that the subject perceives to be external” and hence cannot be carried out
independently (p.98). These authors consider an interiorized scheme to be a “pro-
cess” which is distinguished from an action conception by the conscious control the
individual has over it. Arnon et al. (2014) suggest that repetition and reflection are
central to promoting interiorization, “As actions are repeated and reflected upon, the
individual moves from relying on external cues to having internal control over them.
This is characterized by the ability to image carrying out the steps without necessar-
ily having to perform each one explicitly and by being able to skip steps as well as
reverse them” (p.20). These statements provide insight into the nature of an interior-
ized process. However, they do not describe the actual process of interiorization.
Steffe (1991) refers to an internal process as one that proceeds by making a men-
tal reference to physical objects. In this situation, the child can use his intuitive M1
190 W. Baker
scheme to complete count-up activity and has internalized the process, by making
mental references to physical objects even when they are not present. However,
when the count-up value increased beyond the child’s spontaneous control (from 3
to 5), he lacked the cognitive ability to coordinate his mental reference of objects
with this count-up process, and thus he did not know when to stop counting.
Applying selective attention to the five objects he needed to count-up, the child
abstracted a numerical conception for 5 objects (M2). He could coordinate this con-
ception with his count-up process and thus successfully stopped at the correct result.
This novel activity is said to be an interiorized process because it is directed by the
subject’s conscious reasoning without the need for mental references to physical
objects (internal process). Thus, the birth of the interior counting-up process
occurred simultaneously with his conception of the numerical value 5. In the inte-
grated frame, his internal process of counting-up is his M1; his newly developed
number conception is his M2, which can be said to emerge from M1 through selec-
tive encoding. This conception underlies his new count-up activity, i.e., the pseudo-
code for his novel count-up scheme. This process is referred to as interiorization,
and it presents what is presumably a fair description of the historical development
of how humankind learned the count-up process.
9.2.8 Participatory and Anticipatory Schemes
Tzur (2007), Simon et al. (2016), and Tzur (2021) refer to a subject’s need for assis-
tance or use of situation-dependent schemes as being a participatory scheme. They
describe the so-called “next day effect” in which a subject can use a scheme in class
but cannot act appropriately in the same situation the next day as evidence of par-
ticipatory schemes. With a participatory scheme, the A-E relationship is developing,
and the S-A relationship requires prompts or external assistance:
The participatory stage is characterized by a provisional, prompt-dependent access to a
newly forming scheme…at this stage the learner has abstracted a new anticipation, that is,
an activity-effect [A-E] dyad…this is yet to be linked with a situation/goal part of a new
scheme. (p.333)
These authors refer to a participatory scheme that has become interiorized, as an

anticipatory scheme. Hackenberg (2010) characterizes an anticipatory scheme as
one in which the subject understands the conceptual reasoning for the activity and
thus can anticipate the results, “anticipation involves the attempt to attain the results
of prior experience by generating the cause of them” (p.387). She notes that, with
an anticipatory scheme, because the subject knows the cause, it may be used for
planning and reflection.
9.2.9 Moments of Insight and Internalization-Interiorization
Tzur (2021) suggests that moments of insight occur within both participatory and
anticipatory schemes. Those moments of insight that occur across A-E dyads lead to
an understanding of the invariant nature of the A-E relationships, what he refers to
as the “logical necessity,” i.e., the cause or pseudo-code of a newly formed A-E
dyad. In the work of Hackenberg (2010), the term conceptual reasoning is used to
signify when the subject understands the cause/logical necessity or invariant nature
of the A-E relationships. Thus, a conceptual understanding of the cause allows the
subject to abstract the A-E from the situation, allowing it to be used as input in
another situation, reversed, and combined or synthesized with other processes. In
short, understanding the conceptual reason for a previously participatory scheme is
the hallmark of an “interior” scheme.
In this article, participatory schemes reflect the process of internalization, i.e.,
the subject has a need for assistance from the learning community. Elucidating the
relationship between internal and interior process is a central research issue. Tzur’s
(2021) statement highlights the research question of interest: “what is the nature of
moments of insights within a participatory scheme, i.e., during internalization?” It
also raises an important pedagogical issue, what markers can a teacher use as evi-
dence of internalization.
9.2.10 Internalization: Vygotsky
Vygotsky (1978) posits that learning, in its early stages, takes place through com-
munication with adults who model meaningful activity:
[w]hen the child imitates the way adults use tools and objects, she masters the very princi-
ple involved in a particular activity…repeated actions pile up, one upon another…the com-
mon traits become clear, and the differences become blurred. (p.22)
The notion of internalization as developed by Vygotsky (1978) represents the

transition from interpersonal (external and socially directed) activity to intraper-
sonal (activity under one’s internal control), through a process of conscious
imitation:
We call the internal reconstruction of an exterior operation, internalization…The process of
internalization consists of a series of transformations: (a) An operation that initially repre-
sents an external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally… (b) An interper-
sonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one. Every function in the child’s cultural
development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later on the individual level…(c)
The transformation of interpersonal to intrapersonal one is the result of a long series of
developmental events.
192 W. Baker
Vygotsky illustrates this transformation with a child’s attempt to grasp an object,

and how a parent gives meaning to this grasping process, and transitions it into
pointing “The child’s unsuccessful attempt engenders a reaction not from the object
but from another person…consequently the primary meaning of unsuccessful grasp-
ing movement is established by others” (Vygotsky, 1978, p.56).
Internalization, especially during the transition from arithmetical to algebra
thought, is brought about through socially mediated instruction as the subject
reflects upon their intuitive-spontaneous concepts to build organized structures, i.e.,
scientific concepts Vygotsky (1997). The internalization process begins with recall
and like “interiorization” ends with understanding the cause or logical necessity of
the activity. “For the young child, to think means to recall; but for the adolescent, to
recall means to think. Her memory is so ‘logicalized’ that remembering is reduced
to establishing and finding logical relations; recognizing consists in discovering that
element which the task indicates has to be found…At the transitional age all ideas
and concepts, all mental structures, cease to be organized according to family types
and become organized as abstract concepts” (1978, p.51). Vygotsky (1978) describes
this transition from spontaneous to abstract concepts as passing through a phase of
linking similar examples (schemes) together in series, as one develops a sense of
“family type.” “Children’s concepts relate to a series of examples and are con-
structed in a manner similar to the way we represent family names” (1978, p.50).
9.2.11 Appropriation and Internalization
Vygotsky’s notion of an internal scheme, which is used in this treatise, refers to the
process of learning within mentor-led discourse, leading to independent activity
through the subjects’ understanding of the “logical” or conceptual relationships that
underlie the activity. Both characteristics are used by constructivists as markers for
interiorization. The need to verify independent activity is embedded in the first
internalize and then verify-test methodology of most math classrooms.
For constructivists, who study an individual’s solution activity, evidence of the
conceptual relationships that underlies an interior process or scheme is provided by
the ability to understand when the scheme/process is relevant in a new situation, to
reverse the process, and/or to coordinate it with other schemes, e.g., use it as input
into another scheme. For social constructivists, who focus on social discourse,
understanding conceptual relationships is evidenced by the ability to communicate
such knowledge to other members in the learning community. The term appropria-
tion is often used to analyze learning within social discourse; it has its origins in the
work of the Russian psychologist M.M. Bahktin to understand how children learn
language.
The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker
populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the work, adapt-
ing it to his own semantic and expressive intention. (Bahktin, 1994, p.293)
This explanation suggests there are two phases to appropriation; the first is grasp-
ing and interpreting another’s communication and the second is making it your own.
The goal of the first is to assimilate another’s communication at least partially.
Bahktin describes this phenomenon as being half yours and half someone else’s.
The goal of the second phase is to transform this partially assimilated understanding
into one’s own internal structure, adding it to one’s repertoire or toolbox of con-
cepts, words, and activities.
The use of the term appropriation to describe the internalization of an activity
through communication requires some caveats in the translation from language to
mathematics. In language learning, the second phase of appropriation is often
embodied in one’s ability to use a word in a productive manner or perhaps to explain
what the word means. However, as pointed out in Confrey (p.43, 1994b), the ability
to explain the definition of a math concept (definition of a function) does not imply
the “ability to act accordingly.” In Baker (2021b) a similar situation was highlighted,
in which a subject could explain or interpret the work of another; however, they
were unable to engage in independent solution activity. Thus, independent activity
remains a cornerstone for evaluation of internalization and learning in general.
The painful reality for teachers of the ‘next day’ effect, and the difficulty trans-
lating students’ ability to talk or communicate during today’s classroom with the
ability to act independently on tomorrow’s exam, suggests that a more significant
analysis of appropriation is needed. Although this is beyond the scope of this work,
it is important to note that, when looking for markers of appropriation in student
communication, the quality of the student’s cognition must be a deciding criterion.
In other words, having a sense of another’s communication (first phase) does not
mean you have made it your own (second phase). Thus, the ability to memorize a
definition, does not imply one has any idea how to use it. The ability to interpret
another’s activity does not necessarily mean you understand why they employed it,
how it works, or engage in such activity yourself.
In this study, beyond the criteria of independent activity, evidence for the com-
pletion of the second phase of the appropriation process (making it one’s own) is
taken as the communication of the conceptual relationships that underlie one’s solu-
tion activity, the abstraction of solution activity into family types, and the abstrac-
tion of the objects acted upon, into relevant categories. Sfard (2020) introduces the
term “commognition” to refer to the quality of the cognition, specifically, the level
of abstraction, communicated in dialogue. The notion of commognition includes
three processes, “Saming, Encapsulating, and Reifying.” Saming involves relating
previously unrelated aspects of a situation. Encapsulation involves understanding
that what was previously viewed as separate objects are one entity. Reifying involves
giving an A-E that is at least partially related to a situation, a name, thus indicating
it has reached a noun status or object level. Appropriation in this context, alongside
the ability for independent activity, will be taken as evidence of the completion of
an internalization as well as interiorization.
194 W. Baker
9.3 Pedagogy: Constructivism and Vygotsky
There is a lack of certainty about what exactly is “constructivist pedagogy” and

heated debate about the causes of its failure when applied system-wide in the math-
ematics classroom (Baker, 2021b). That said, constructivist pedagogy is associated
with instruction founded upon an individual’s reflection on available schemes. In
particular, the second tenet of constructivism states instruction should not begin
with unfamiliar definitions or activity beyond student experience. The role of the
instructor is to guide students with minimal instruction to reflect upon their schemes:
If the pedagogue is a Piagetian constructivist, he/she will refrain from verbal explanations
because he or she believes the source of understanding is in the individual’s actions of
physical or mental objects. (Sierpinska, p.39, 1998)
Thus, a central feature of the role of an instructor in constructivist pedagogy can

be understood as to present helpful problems that assist in reflection upon available
schemes during solution activity that leads to accommodation. This methodology
requires the use of well thought-out, innovative examples that are designed to “(a)
Bring forth learning relevant activity-effect anticipations and (b) Bring forth notic-
ing of intended effects” Tzur (2021, p.329). In constructivist pedagogy, the desired
effect is to induce interiorization, understood as the foundation for growth in
process-object duality (Dubinsky, 1991; Czarnocha et al., 1999; Sfard, 1991).
In contrast, Vygotsky’s notion of internalization involves a subject’s understand-
ing of an externally modeled activity, one that may not be an available scheme.
Ideally, in Vygotsky’s social constructivist methodology, instruction is within the
upper level of the student’s ZPD, i.e., a bit above, yet relatable to their available
schemes. In this methodology, higher level activity, notation, and content are to be
introduced, and the instructor’s role is to assist the student make a connection to
their existing schemes that will provide meaning to the higher-level activity-
notation-content (Baker, 2021b).
Berger (2005) argues that the focus of constructivism on transforming activity on
existing schemes into interior processes does not account for how students learn
math symbols and terminology within social discourse:
But much of this process−object theory does not resonate with a great deal of what I see in
my mathematics classroom. For example, it does not help me explain or describe what is
happening when a learner fumbles around with ‘new’ mathematical signs making what
appear to be arbitrary connections between these new signs and other apparently unrelated
signs. Similarly, it does not explain how these incoherent−seeming activities can lead to
usages of mathematical signs that are both acceptable to professional members of the math-
ematical world and that are personally meaningful to the learner. I suggest that the central
drawback of these neo−Piagetian theories is that they are rooted in a framework in which
conceptual understanding is regarded as deriving largely from interiorized actions; the cru-
cial role of language (or signs) and the role of social regulation and the social constitution
of the body of mathematical knowledge is not integrated into the theoretical framework.
(pp.154)
Berger does not appear to completely accept the notion, embedded in construc-
tivist pedagogy, that new notation and schemes should not be presented, until all
perquisite schemes and notation have been understood. Indeed, as the instructor, she
expects students to “fumble around” and make “arbitrary connections” as the new
notation is at the upper level of the student’s ZPD. This raises the question, “what
type of activity is required to induce a moment of insight leading to concept forma-
tion when the subject does not have a suitable scheme?” If direct definitions are of
no avail, can the mentor actively guide, present, or explain to the mentee suitable
examples and to what extent can listening to the explanations of a mentor result in
concept development for a mentee?
As noted, unlike constructivists, Vygotsky believes that meaning for activity
comes the development of scientific concepts within instruction. “The scientific
concepts evolve under the conditions of systematic cooperation between the child
and the teacher. Developmental and maturation of the child’s higher functions are
products of this cooperation” (Vygotsky, 1997, p.148). From a pedagogical view-
point, the keyword here is cooperation, and this does not imply direct instruction:
A concept is more than the sum of certain associative bonds formed by memory…it is a
complex and genuine act of thought that cannot be taught by drilling…Practical experience
also shows that direct teaching of concepts is impossible and fruitless. A teacher who does
this usually accomplishes noting but empty verbalism. (Vygotsky, 1997, pp.149–159)
Koestler, whose bisociation theory is the basis for the integrated frame, believed
that spontaneous acts of creativity occur throughout the learning process, but only
in untutored learning. “Minor bisociative processes do occur on all levels and are
the main vehicles of untutored learning” (Koestler, 1964, p.658). Thus, like most
creativity theory, the focus is on the individual’s search process, and not instruction,
or assistance in guiding this search process.
Indeed, Koestler devotes an entire section of his book to the “boredom of sci-
ence” in which he argues that formalistic discourse has reduced math and science to
a boredom of definitions, ruining the spirit of intuitive discovery required to appre-
ciate the beauty of these subjects:
The same inhuman, in fact anti-human-trend pervades the climate in which science is
taught, the classrooms, and the textbooks. To derive pleasure from the art of discovery, as
from other acts, the consumer-in the case, the student- must be made to re-live, to some
extent, the creative process. In other words, he must be induced, with proper aid and guid-
ance, to make some of the fundamental discoveries of science by himself, to experience in
his own mind some of those flashes of insight which have lightened its path. (Koestler,
1964, p.265–266)
As a teacher researcher, this work is founded on the belief that students at all
levels of mathematics must experience moments of insight to relieve the boredom
of mathematics and to grow in understanding. Following Vygotsky, the focus of this
study is internalization within social discourse, and the pedagogical issue is to high-
light the role of the teacher in inducing such moments of insight.
196 W. Baker
9.4 Research
The goal of this study is to provide supporting evidence that bisociative moments of
insight occur and are the mechanism for acts of accommodation during internaliza-
tion, i.e., when the subject requires mentor assistance, thus extending Koestler’s
view that such moments of insight occur primarily in “untutored learning.” To
accomplish this goal, the primary objective is to review the integrated frame used to
analyze an individual’s moment of insight leading to acts of accommodation, devel-
oped previously, and then extend this frame to include internalization. The first
research question is to describe the genesis of concepts during internalization and
compare this to genesis of concepts embedded in developing schemes within the
process of interiorization, as presented by Steffe (1991). A second related research
question is to investigate how matrices or schemes emerge and are grouped together
into conceptual structures, or toolboxes of schemes, during internalization, essen-
tially what Vygotsky (1978) refers to as a “family type.” In this second research
question, the constructivist notions that are useful to analyze these moments of
insight to build up a toolbox during internalization include Piaget’s notion of “con-
structive generalization” and the notion of invariant relationships.
Pedagogically, the research objective is to highlight how teacher-mentors can
support moments of insight within the internalization process, i.e., social discourse.
The empirical evidence collected will then be used to briefly reflect upon the role of
the teacher within the context of constructivist and social constructivist pedagogy.
9.5 Stages of Internalization: Empirical Examples
Vygotsky’s conception of internalization suggests many levels of development the

child may experience as they internalize mathematical content. In our analysis, we
consider two overarching categories; one is characterized by passive reception or
processing of teacher-mentor- directed activity (external), and the other is marked
by an active effort to provide meaning for such activity. Within the active category
of internalization, we consider three stages. These stages loosely correspond to
Berger’s (2004a, b) use of Vygotsky’s three stages of concept development: heap,
complex, and pseudo-concept/concept.
9.5.1 Interpersonal Learning Social Participatory Stage
For Vygotsky, internalization involves conscious imitation of adult behavior; as

such it begins with watching and listening to modeled solution activity, which is
perceived as externally driven. During the social participatory stage, internalization
begins as the learner (albeit passively) struggles to make sense out of modeled solu-
tion activity, new definitions, or symbols.
Example 1: The Elephant Aha Moment (Kadej (1999), Czarnocha and Baker
(2021, pp.95–98)).
The discovery of a hidden analogy to abstract a concept within direct instruc-
tional methodology.
Two children were trying to solve the algebraic equation x + (x + 12) = 76, one
child-mentor readily understood the task and was attempting to explain it to his
peer-mentee who did not understand the concept of the variable “x” as representing
an unknown numerical value. Following the textbook, the mentor-child points out
that the “x” term can be viewed as a blank square, into which one inputs any numeri-
cal value. This simply confuses the peer-mentee, who is thinking along a concrete
line of reasoning and, thus, rejects the obvious inconsistency that “x” is a blank
square. Then, the mentor child describes the blank square as a window while simul-
taneously simplifying the problem as two windows (blank squares) that are equal to
64, while asking “what is each window?”. However, the mentee child continues to
engage in concrete reasoning rejecting the comparison of a blank square to a win-
dow as more confusion. Finally, the mentor child attempts an analogy using ele-
phants, asking “two elephants are 64, what is each elephant?”. The mentee child
ponders and then proclaims one elephant is 32. I understand now!
The mentor reframes the situation to make sure the mentee understands, asking
“if two elephants are 60, how much is each?”. Immediately the mentee-child pro-
vides the correct response.
9.5.2 Discussion: Example 1
Initially, the mentee-child grasps very little of the variable concept; thus, the M1
search matrix does not contain any scheme to reflect upon; instead, it consists of a
nonsensical symbol “x.” The mentor employs a common approach of introducing
different analogies to guide the mentee towards this concept. Radford (2003)
describes such a situation as the tension between the individual and the learning
community leading to “transitional language” that results in the individual giving
meaning to symbols using “metaphor.” Initially, the subject does not relate to these
transitional terms – they are simply not part of his toolbox. The discovery of the
elephant metaphor can be seen as what Matsushima (2020) refers to as dynamic
composition within appropriation, i.e., it exists in the mind of the mentor first and is
borrowed by the mentee. The moment of insight occurs when the mentee grasps the
uncovered previously hidden analogy between taking half of two elephants-M2 and
the symbol-variable “x”-M1. During this bisociative moment of realization, the con-
cept of an unknown exists in both matrices, and the intuitive M2 matrix gives mean-
ing to the mentee-child’s previously non-existent M1 solution activity. Thus, the
bisociative connection between elephants and the symbol x results in the internal-
ization of the variable concept, a novel concept, i.e., growth in understanding.
In Steffe’s (1991) example of interiorization, M1 is an intuitive count-up scheme,
while M2 is the abstraction of the number concept required to end the count-up
198 W. Baker
process. In this case, M1 is a search matrix with no scheme; indeed, the variable “x”
appears to have little meaning to the subject. The M2 analogy that gives meaning to
the variable x or M1 is an intuitive scheme the child can grasp. Pedagogically, this
is a good example of Vygotsky’s educational approach, in which a mentor is ahead
of a child’s developmental level, yet within their ZPD.
9.5.3 Active Internalization: Interpersonal to Intrapersonal –

Heap Stage
Vygotsky (1978) notes that for children to think means to recall, and at this stage
understanding consists of the recall of activities viewed as “isolated instances” with
little to no logical structure or conceptual understanding. At the early stages of inter-
nalization, the link between situation and activity is essentially founded upon imita-
tion of previous examples; thus, if the teacher mixes up examples or reintroduces
after a pause, a similar example, students at this level may be confused and resort to
guessing what activity is appropriate or choose a non-relevant activity based upon a
superficial understanding of the new situation.
Berger (2004a) suggests that in heap thinking, “the person links ideas or objects
together as a result of an idiosyncratic association” (p.3). She elaborates on the
quality of the link at this stage, noting that “objects are linked by chance in the
child’s perception” (p.5). Berger refers to such links as surface associations, which
result when the solver reads and interprets problem information in a superficial
manner. Berger provides examples in which a solver attempts to employ symbols or
phrases (keywords) in a problem situation without reasoning based upon any real
understanding. Their selection of symbols and keywords is designed to simplify
their cognitive load. Hence, the resulting activity is often incorrect.
Solvers at this stage, lacking logical structure, or what Vygotsky refers to as a
notion of “family type,” frequently attempt to direct their activity through imitation
of modeled activity. Thus, learning often consists of reviewing, class notes, text-
book examples, or videos of similar exercises to assist in problem solving. At this
stage, the S-G and A-E relationships are weak based upon superficial associations,
and the so-called “next-day effect” where solvers perform with some degree of pro-
ficiency in class, but not independently, i.e., the next day.
9.5.4 Example 2: T-INTERVAL
This example is taken from work with students in an online (zoom) math class dur-
ing the pandemic. It represents an example of students cooperating, which was not
a common event as most students were very passive while participating using online
platforms.
Previous class time had been spent on using calculator commands for hypothesis
testing and confidence intervals. Wendy internalized that a collection-toolbox of
commands were available using the STAT/TEST menu. She also understood that for
a normal distribution, one typically used either the Z-Test or the Z-Interval com-
mand in this menu or toolbox of commands. However, this problem required her to
understand a new concept, T-distribution. Indeed, students were now being asked to
choose between two types of commands involving either Z or T distributions, fur-
ther complicating the issue that each type could require one of the two categories,
either internal confidence or testing commands. There was a third involving sample
proportions, but it will be simpler for the reader if left out of the discussion. Thus,
she needed to generalize the two commands learned previously into two categories,
and two types, or family names.
Students traditionally experience a high degree of uncertainty and frustration
trying to understand which of these commands is appropriate. The mentee student
(Wendy) is in the process of consciously imitating modeled problem-solving behav-
ior; she knows to use the STATS/TESTS toolbox collection of commands on her
calculator. However, she is not sure which one to use. At this point, Wendy brings
the exercise to class and asks what to do! (Interpersonal process). Wendy states that
it appeared to involve a T command instead of Z command; she was unsure why and
was not clear about whether it involved a test or interval command, and her voice
suggested she was overwhelmed.
The instructor, who had modeled the variations of problems require several
times, realizes that Wendy needs another voice (preferably a peer, not an authority)
to explain, and asks if any other student can help her. A mentor student (Marisol)
volunteers to explain. Marisol first, explains that the question asks for an interval,
and thus you need to use an Interval command under the TESTS options. This
explanation helps Wendy formulate the concept-categories of interval versus testing
commands. It also reduces the search to discriminating between the two family
types, Z- Interval or T-Interval. Wendy listens attentively and appears to understand.
Second, Marisol points out that there is a hint which explicitly states that, because
there is a sample standard deviation, the problem requires a T-distribution, and thus,
she concludes the T-Interval command is appropriate. At this point, Wendy is
silently processing what Marisol has said, then indicates she now understands, and
thanks Marisol.
9.5.5 Discussion
Wendy’s initial understanding of the situation (M1) included a sense of what to do,
based upon her appropriation of previous examples (her hybrid or partial concep-
tion). However, her partial conception was inadequate to support independent activ-
ity. Her statement that it was probably a T-distribution (not sure why) suggests a
faltering ability to express this appropriated conception. Thus, she needed confirma-
tion to enter confidently into the second phase of appropriation, in part because the
200 W. Baker
need to navigate four variations of commands was overwhelming. Instead, her

search process, classic to internalization, was to ask for assistance and then try to
understand what she was told. Kosko (2014) refers to this as active listening.
Thompson et al. (2004) suggest that such listening is the foundation of critical
thinking and involves receiving knowledge, comparing received to previous knowl-
edge leading to comprehension and finally to evaluation.
The mentor, Marisol, guided Wendy’s attention to coordinate the previously
unclear problem information, with the required commands (M2). First, Marisol
guided by pointing out there were two overarching categories, testing – find the
percent or interval problems. Wendy listens intently and spontaneously understands
the need to discriminate between Test and Interval commands. Although online
learning makes it difficult to observe the learners affect, it was clear that while lis-
tening to Marisol, Wendy received or appropriated the knowledge imparted by
Marisol, and as she reframed from further questions and could act independently
afterword this suggests she comprehended it, i.e., her growth in understanding
allowed her to direct future solution activity – M2. This suggests that, as in the first
example, a moment of insight or transfer from Marisol to Wendy occurred during
active learning, providing another example of “dynamic composition” Matsushima
(2020). Marisol’s second explanation served to highlight uncovered problem infor-
mation (the hint), which provided a positive evaluation confirmation for Wendy that
her tentative appropriation knowledge (T-distribution) was correct.
Although, it was not possible to observe her affect (it was an online session, and
her camera was off) it was clear Wendy’s understanding of Marisol’s comments was
real and immediate, as she thanked Marisol. Furthermore, it became clear that
Wendy had developed a new scheme, as she independently completed the related
homework, and received a 100% on the next exam. Previously she was a B+ student.
Wendy also demonstrated motivation and did well on the final and included several
such (Test/Interval) problems with six different related commands required, indicat-
ing she had developed an organized toolbox for these six related commands or A-E-
dyads under the STAT/TEST menu. Finally, it is worth noting that, in this example,
the active listening by Wendy was essentially a reflection upon Marisol’s guidance
through a solution activity Wendy had previously attempted. Thus, although not
exactly reflection upon her own solution activity, it contained elements of reflective
abstraction, as well as reflection during active listening-appropriation.
9.5.6 Internalization Complex Stage
The complex stage marks the transformation of the operation into an intrapersonal
process. This occurs with the development of a “family name” for the activity that
is a sense of “problem type” obtained not necessarily by an understanding of the
underlying structure rather through the linking of different but similar examples
together one at a time. Berger (2004b) describes this stage in terms of developing a
nucleus built up by relating similar examples and then linking them together
initially by superficial but ultimately by their invariant relationships. Thus, it is in

this stage that moments of insight occur as students bring their conscious awareness
to their own independent activity comparing A-E-dyads for similar exercises to
develop an invariant relationship and observe other’s activity that somehow relate to
their available schemes. Tzur (2021, pp.336) refers to such comparing as awareness
of “across activity-effect instances.”
Berger (2004b) suggests that the common pedagogical technique of teaching by
examples often results in students (Complex Stage) incorrectly linking the observed
activity in superficially similar but cognitively different problem examples. She
illustrates this, with the example of students who understand that one multiplies the
rate with the time to find the distance. However they continue with this multiplica-
tion-activity when the problem gives distance, time and asks for the rate, or gives
distance, the rate and asks for the time. Another case where learning by examples
yielding incorrect links is provided by Berger (2004b) when students who have
learned that f(x) = |x| is everywhere continuous but not differentiable apply this
model to conclude the same is true for all absolute value functions even g(x) = |x2|.
9.5.7 Example 3: The Domain Aha Moment (Czarnocha &

Baker, 2021, p. 99–101)
A student understands the domain of the proto-type example ( f x x ) as being

the values x ≥ 0. She incorrectly uses this template to conclude that the domain of
the similar function f x x 3 is also x ≥ 0. At the direction of the instructor,
she checks several negative integer values for x, including −3, and the student
begins to realize something is wrong; when the instructor asks whether x = −2
works, the student ponders before declaring. “Those x’s which are smaller than −3
can’t be used here!”. As noted in Czarnocha and Baker (2021, p.99–101), this marks
the student’s first realization of a new guiding principle. Thus, this realization is the
result of selective encoding, in which the new action scheme M2 emerges from
conscious attention to her available scheme M1. Selective combination-coordination
is also involved as she coordinates her instructor-led activity with her initial under-
standing of the domain. The instructor, to determine whether an invariant relation-
ship has been established, asks the student for the domain of g x x 1, and
after pondering for a minute, she provides the correct response.
In this realization, the student’s M1 was her previous understanding of the
domain of the absolute value function f(x) = |x|, x ≥ 0; after her work following
instructor guidance, she realizes that values such as x = −1, −2, −3 are all excep-
tions, i.e., they are part of the domain for f x x 3; these exceptions to her M1
rule or code are the basis of a new conception or M2, and as she coordinates these
values with her previous understanding, she generalizes the code from x ≥ 0 to
x + 3 ≥ 0 (x ≥ −3). Thus, she forms new S-A and A-E relationships evidenced in her
understanding of the domain of the similar function g x x 1 (x ≥ 0.1). With
202 W. Baker
these moments of realization, she is developing a new code or invariant relationship

for linear factors under a radical, based upon connections between similar examples
or family type. This can be seen as an example of a realization leading to an invari-
ant relationship across A-E dyads (Tzur, 2021, pp.336). It can also be understood as
an example of the commognition Sfard (2020) refers to as “Saming.”
9.5.8 Internalization: Pseudo-Concept Stage
At this stage, the subject shows signs of conceptual reasoning, i.e., activity based
upon concepts and their relationship to the situation. Thus, they are developing an
abstracted A-E relationship based upon conceptual reasoning that underlies connec-
tions. In Koestler terminology, we say that a code is being abstracted.
In the preceding example the subject has successfully provided the domain for
f x x 3 and g x x 1 based upon the coordination of her initial scheme
(domain of the radical x function) with her reasoning that the linear expression
under the radical must be greater than or equal to zero (the invariant relationship).
Next, the instructor asks for the domain of h x x a after pondering she has a
second realization and provides the correct answer x ≥ a. At this point, the student
has abstracted the invariant relationship or guiding principle into an algebraic
expression or code that works for all such problems (linear factors beneath a radi-
cal). Her ability to express the domain using symbolic notation can be viewed as a
communication of her conceptual reasoning and hence as an example of appropria-
tion, one of the characteristics for the completion of internalization. Thus, this real-
ization involves an abstraction of the invariant relationship across A-E-dyads (Tzur,
2021, pp.336) or the abstraction of a new code.
9.5.9 Discussion
In this example, the constructivist notion of reflective abstraction begins to merge

with Vygotsky’s notion of internalization. Thus, reflection upon another’s solution
activity, i.e., appropriation demonstrated in previous examples is replaced with
reflection upon one’s own solution activity, albeit activity guided by the instructor,
i.e., reflective abstraction. Analyzed using the integrated frame, the subject has an
initial understanding of the situation M1 that directs her activity. However, it is
based upon a template example, which she does not generalize correctly. Under the
instructor’s tutelage, she engages in solution activity with different values of x, until
she experiences an “Uphs effect” or the realization that her initial M1 scheme is
inappropriate.
In the initial moments of insight, the subject uses her innate ability to compare
different concrete experiences of substitution to abstract the A-E dyad for x + 3,
and the A-E-dyad x −1 in this process, M1 was her understanding of the domain
of x and M2 was her understanding of solving linear equations such as x + 3 ≥ 0,

x−1 ≥ 0. Thus, the instructor-guided solution activity resulted in selective coordina-
tion-combination, or bisociation of her M1 and M2 schemes, that resulted in a new
albeit local code for each A-E-dyad. This new code is the logical necessity or the
“reason why,” i.e., the cause that transfers from M2 to M1 for each dyad.
The second moment of insight occurs as she reflects across her newly constructed
A-E- dyads for radical (x + 3) and radical (x − 1), which now represent her M1, and
her insight can be viewed as the result of her innate ability for pattern recognition as
she coordinates the problem, (finding the domain of the radical (x + a) function)
with these M1.
In this case, the subject recognizes and expresses in symbolic language the
invariant conceptual relationship that underlies the linking of her A-E-dyads. This
communication represents an act of appropriation (second phase) or the type of
commognition Sfard (2020) refers to as “Reifying” as she is communicating her
understanding of this invariant relationship with an algebraic formula.
9.6 Concluding Remarks
The goal of this article is to highlight moments of insight, as students struggle to

internalize mathematics in a classroom situation. The primary research objective is
to extend the integrated frame to internalization, and in so doing to highlight the
relationship between this process, and the constructivist notion of interiorization.
The first research question is to describe concept development within the inter-
nalization process and compare this to concept development within interiorization.
In the first example, the child is struggling to appropriate the concept of an unknown
as expressed by the symbol “x,” i.e., he is struggling to give meaning to a new object
or sign. His motive is to understand what is being presented, and his M1 understand-
ing is very limited. As the mentee presents different M2 analogies, the subject
finally realizes (in a flash) the connection between taking half the given weight of
two unknown (twin) elephants to find the weight of each one. This guided discovery
of a previously hidden analogies allows meaning to transfer from his intuitive
scheme of taking half of elephants to the required symbol manipulation of symbol
“x.” As the concept of an unknown emerges from his spontaneous or intuitive taking
half scheme, it represents both the genesis of a concept as well as of a scheme. This
act of appropriating another’s understanding of a symbol, sign, or word name is
essentially what Sfard (2020) describes as “reifying,” i.e., the giving of a name
(object level status) to a process. In the process of interiorization as described by
Steffe (1991), the number concept (five) also emerges from an intuitive scheme and,
thus, represents both the genesis of a concept and a process (count-up).
During interiorization, the M1 is the intuitive scheme, and the M2 is a concept
that emerges through reflection upon one’s M1 solution activity; hence interioriza-
tion is a foundational process of reflective abstraction. As this reflection uncovers
204 W. Baker
what was previously known, albeit only intuitively, hence it can be viewed as selec-
tive encoding. In contrast, during internalization, the M1 is essentially not func-
tional, and meaning or growth in structural understanding is obtained during active
listening. This is an example of reflection during social communication, a process
Vygotsky (1997) describes as synonymous with reflective consciousness. As the
search to appropriate meaning of the symbol “x” involved active listening, the
moment of insight can be understood as the guided realization of a previously hid-
den analogy, i.e., selective comparison without synthesis of schemes.
Internalization as presented by Vygotsky often involves the recall of externally
modeled activity. Whereas, in the first example, the subject (heap stage) is learning
a completely new concept embodied within a symbol, and M1 is essentially non-
functional, in the second example (complex stage), the subject has an M1 scheme,
based upon recall, and is in the process of building up a toolbox of schemes or a
collection of schemes within a family type.
In this example, her M1 search matrix includes a vague recall of how to proceed,
i.e., where to go on the calculator to find the appropriate toolbox of commands.
However, she lacks the ability to select the relevant problem information, and coor-
dinate it, with her solution activity. The instructor’s methodology was to ask other
students to explain. The mentor-student did not attempt to explain the concepts
needed; instead, they focused on recognizing these concepts in the problem situa-
tion and how these concepts connect to and thus direct (novel) solution activity. The
growth in understanding was to first discriminate between two types (categories) or
problems, confidence interval and hypothesis testing, and second, between two
types of tools or schemes (Z versus T distributions). Thus, through active listening,
the subject learned that there is a new tool to be used in two types of problems, and
she learned to recognize when this new tool was required. This growth in under-
standing can be understood as the result of a projection of an existing M1 into a
novel situation, and the resulting coordination (bisociative synthesis) between M1
and M2 features required to resolve the problem, while leading to a new code.
Hence, it is like Piaget’s notion of “constructive generalization.” This distinction
being that it involves active listening as opposed to reflection upon one’s own solu-
tion activity.
In the third example, although directed by the teacher, the subject’s reflection is
completely upon her own solution activity, not upon communicated knowledge;
thus, her moments of insight can be analyzed within the integrated frame as reflec-
tive abstraction. As the instructor skillfully directs the student to reflect upon pat-
terns of substitution, she is guided to an “Upps effect” and ultimately the synthesis
of her M2 conceptual understanding of the (more-than /less-than zero) solution of a
linear inequality with her initial M1 understanding of the domain of a radical, as
being greater than or equal to zero. Thus, her moment of insight can be understood
as “constructive generalization”; in that, she has an existing M1 scheme that is first
projected into the new situation and then coordinated (bisociative synthesis) with
features of this situation that were previously overlooked to begin the formation of
a new concept and code.
In the constructivist frame, one can also understand her moments of insight as
interiorization. In this view, her initial M1 scheme was dependent upon the situation
(participatory schemes). The coordination (bisociative synthesis) of her initial M1
domain scheme with her M2 linear inequality scheme provides a good example of
constructive generalization after the instructor recognition of the invariant relation-
ships embedded in the patterns of substitution (discovery of a hidden analogy-M2).
Her communication of these domains to the instructor represents the second phase
of appropriation and indicates a new code is developing.
In the fourth example, the subject abstracted the invariant relationship of her
previous work. Thus, she understands them as reflecting one code, encapsulation
(Sfard, 2020), which she gives a name in symbolic form, reifying (Sfard, 2020).
These latter examples highlight aspects of the second research question. In the sec-
ond, active listening, on communication of content analogous to an existing scheme,
leads to construction of similar “family-type” schemes. In the latter two examples,
pattern recognition and abstraction of an invariant relationship lead to encapsulation
and reifying of solution activity (processes) into a code expressed in symbolic form.
This demonstrates her object level understanding of these processes as different
schemes that can be organized as one, named entity.
Pedagogically, these examples demonstrate the effectiveness of guiding students
to “Upps effects” through pattern recognition as opposed to direct instruction. They
also show that peer-peer dialogue involving direct analogies can be very effective in
leading to moments of insight.
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Chapter 10
A Reconsideration of Appropriation
from a Sociocultural Perspective
Mitsuru Matsushima
10.1 Introduction
Why does interaction in the learning community deepen mathematics learning?

How does individual learning contribute to the learning community through dia-
logue and deepen mathematics learning? These questions can be answered from not
the viewpoint of dualism, which considers the learning of society and the individual
separately, but from a sociocultural perspective, which considers these aspects
jointly. Sfard (2008), who pioneered the unique concept of “commognition” based
on psychology and philosophy, emphasized that communication represents thinking
itself, focusing on the connection between individual thinking and community
learning from a sociocultural approach.
Ernest (1998, 2010) demonstrated the structural deepening of mathematics learn-
ing within an individual from the perspective of social constructivism based on
sociocultural perspective. Ernest (2010) showed that the key to facilitating mathe-
matics learning was the publication of individual sign use and appropriation. The
concept of appropriation took shape from Bakhtin’s linguistic philosophy and
Vygotsky’s psychology, and it plays an important role in the study of learning from
a sociocultural perspective. Appropriation is defined as a “process that has as its end
result the individual’s reproduction of historically formed human properties, capaci-
ties, and modes of behavior” (Leontyev, 1981, p. 422). Following the above studies,
Matsushima (2020, 2021) connected individual thinking with learning communities
from the perspective of appropriation to present the structure of deepening mathe-
matical learning through dialogue as shown in Fig. 10.1. The two main features of
appropriation are given below.
M. Matsushima (*)
Kagawa University, Takamatsu, Japan
e-mail: matsushima.mitsuru@kagawa-u.ac.jp
210 M. Matsushima
Fig. 10.1 Extended model of sign appropriation and use (Matsushima, 2020, p. 113)
Feature 1 (dynamic composition):

Gradually forming one’s concept by speaking, while borrowing the concept
of others.
Feature 2 (mutual composition):
The concept of learning community is formed in the process of forming the concept
of self. (Matsushima, 2021)
As the above two appropriation features indicate, appropriation is dynamically
composed of the concept of learner and learning community and mutually com-
posed of both by bidirectionally influencing the learner’s concept and learning com-
munity’s concept. In other words, appropriation facilitates the concepts of individual
learners and learning community to develop interactively (Brown et al., 1993).
Conceptual development here refers to the ability to use language appropriately. In
mathematics learning, being able to use mathematical words and signs appropri-
ately indicates a deep understanding of mathematics.
However, only a few studies have so far examined the concept of appropriation, with the
concept itself appearing confusing. For example, few bidirectional discussions on appro-
priation can be found in the literature, with many studies examining the concept within each
individual (e.g., Moschkovich, 2004; Solomon et al., 2021). Furthermore, it is difficult to
distinguish between appropriation and similar concepts (e.g., Brown et al., 1993). One
study points out the problem how to think about the effects of appropriation when the
learner does not speak to others (Carlsen, 2010).
To solve these research problems, we need to first clarify the features of appro-
priation. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to reconsider the concept of appro-
priation and clarify its features.
10 A Reconsideration of Appropriation from a Sociocultural Perspective 211
10.2 Structure of This Chapter
In this chapter, we first review previous research on appropriation and point out
three problems with the concept of internalization, which is closely related to the
concept of appropriation. To show that the appropriation as a concept that over-
comes the three problems of internalization, we first discuss how the learner’s con-
cept may be transformed by appropriation based on Figure 10.1. In the discussion,
we proceed with the discussion separately for the case where the learner is the
speaker of the dialogue and the case where the learner is the listener, and solve the
first two problems of internalization. Then we will cite the discussion of intersub-
jectivity regarding the connections between individual learners and communities
from knowledge of developmental psychology to overcome the third problem.
Through these discussions, the concept of appropriation is clarified as a concept to
overcome the three problems of internalization, and its six characteristics are
pointed out. Finally, from the standpoint of a sociocultural approach, we will answer
the following questions: “Why does dialogue deepen mathematics learning?” “Will
mathematics learning deepen without dialogue?”
10.3 Problems Related to the Concept of Appropriation
As stated in the previous section, the concept of appropriation took shape from
Bakhtin’s philosophy of language and Vygotsky’s psychology. Bakhtin (1981)
explains the polyphonic nature of spoken language as follows:
The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker
populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word adapting
it to his own semantic and expressive intention. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293)
This quotation outlines the concept of appropriation. People discuss a concept at

the beginning using the concept of others and gradually form their concept based on
it. Note the start point of concept formation here. The first point is borrowing the
concept from others. Conventions such as concepts, ideas, and values of others are
shared with the community even before we join the community. Individuals in the
learning community assimilate conventions individually through appropriation, the
start point of concept formation. Discussing and acting on these conventions also
affect the concept formation of others and learning community. This bidirectional
concept formation chain between individuals and the learning community trans-
forms the conventions of individuals and the learning community. In other words,
individuals and the learning community continue to form new conventions (Cazden,
2001; Rogoff, 2003). These features involve both dynamic and mutual composition
(Matsushima, 2021). However, a new question arises here. How does one borrow
the concept of others? Furthermore, are there any restrictions on borrowing the con-
cept of others? The two features mentioned above do not answer these questions.
This study therefore tries to examine whether these two features are valid and
212 M. Matsushima
answers the above new questions in terms of the two previous studies that clearly
state the appropriation features.
The first study describes three characteristics of the appropriation process
(Nunokawa & Kuwayama, 2003) based on a case study as follows:
(a) In the process of appropriation, the student created kinds of hybrids between the old and
new ideas.
(b) When the new idea was presented by the others, the student attempted to interpret it
in the framework of the old method he had used up to then.
(c) There were long time-lags even before the student began to incorporate some aspects
of the new idea into the method he had used up to then. (Nunokawa & Kuwayama, 2003,
pp. 303–304)
Characteristic (a) is the same as the dynamic composition of an individual’s

appropriation but refers to the quality of the object to be composed. The object cre-
ated through appropriation is not completely new but based on the previous object.
New ideas are thus constrained by old ideas. Characteristics (b) and (c) need to be
recombined from the old framework to formulate the new object to be created in the
new framework, but this takes time. These points relate to appropriation and resis-
tance (Wertsch, 1998). Appropriation is carried out on the basis of existing indi-
vidual and learning community conventions, but these existing conventions
historically and culturally constrain appropriation.
The second study examined the appropriation process (Carlsen, 2010) and clari-
fied the following five appropriation processes in mathematics learning:
1. Be involved in joint activity.
2. Establish a shared focus of attention with others. Students have to develop some kind of
working consensus of what to pay attention to in a mathematical task.
3. Develop shared meanings of words and concepts, i.e., meanings in accordance with the
mathematics community through participating in joint decision-making processes.
4. Be involved in the activity of transforming, a process where the students appropriate
actions and utterances by fellow students in the collaborative problem-solving context
and use them in ongoing activities.
5. Attend to the problem of the relationship between sense and meaning by identifying the
relations between pre-existing established mathematical knowledge in the classroom
and students’ joint activity in the small group. (Carlsen, 2010, p.99)
Like these five processes, from the standpoint of a sociocultural approach, a
concept is a way of using signs. The use of signs for mathematics as concepts in
dialogue with others is appropriated by the acceptance and criticism of the learning
community. This is a process of collaborative creation based on existing concepts
and experiences, involving sharing with the learning community. At the same time,
individual learners themselves try to form a concept. This process is highly consis-
tent with the extended model in Fig. 10.1 and can be considered to have features of
both dynamic and mutual composition. In particular, note that descriptions that are
conscious of the two-way concept formation can be found between the learner and
other learners. Also, note the objectification (e.g., Radford, 2003; Roth & Radford,
2011) of the learning objects in this paper. Objectification in the learning commu-
nity is “embedded in socio-psycho-semiotic meaning-making processes framed by
cultural modes of knowing that encourage and legitimize particular forms of sign
and tool use” (Radford, 2003, p.44). Objectification is the process and result of
creating a method for using signs as a concept, with focus on the connection between
the learning community and individual learners, and it has much in common with
appropriation. Carlsen (2010) often mentions objectification in his study. A com-
parison of these two concepts shows that appropriation is better to express the
polyphony of Bakhtin (1981) and objectification is better to overcome dualism by
emphasizing the connection with the concept of subjectification. However, the sig-
nificance of these concepts will be a subject for future research. Moreover, objecti-
fication focuses on the reflection/refraction of individual learners in the process
(Roth & Radford, 2011). It shows the importance of reflective thinking and the gap
in thinking with the learning community when deepening individual thinking based
on the connection with the learning community. The reflection/refraction viewpoint
is also very important when deepening the concept of appropriation.
From the previous two research models and a comparison of the two features of the dynamic
and mutual composition, we see no reason to deny the two features. And additional factor
found is the historical and cultural restrictions of the appropriation as existing conventions
interfere with the appropriation. Note that reflective thinking and deviations occur when
connecting with the thinking of the learning community.
So far, we considered appropriation based on Bakhtin’s philosophy of language.

Another source of appropriation is Vygotsky (1978), but this source uses the term
internalization rather than appropriation for the internal reconstruction of external
operations. Vygotsky’s disciple Leont’ev replaced Piaget’s notion of assimilation
with appropriation (Leontyev, 1981). In assimilation, a learner takes information
from the outside world in the framework of the learner’s individual knowledge with-
out change. This transformation from assimilation to appropriation can be due to the
change in focus from biological ontogeny to a socio-historical perspective. Leont’ev
(1974) also emphasized on activity and thought that the mediation of artifacts in
activity would connect learners, objects, and others within the learning community.
However, some researchers have pointed out that the concept of internalization has
the following problems:
1: It easily leads to dualism between individual and social. This assumes that internalization
occurs solely through personal influence (Wertsch, 1998).
2: It is misunderstood to be a concept of passively copying information from the outside
world to an individual (Cazden, 2001).
3: The mechanism of internalization is not clear (Brown et al., 1993).
In view of these points, Wertsch (1998) classified internalization into two types,
mastery and appropriation. Internalization as mastery allows the use of cultural
signs as an intermediary, whereas internalization as appropriation is the process of
taking something belonging to others and making it your own (Wertsch, 1998).
However, this appropriation, which is as an elaboration of internalization in Wertsch
(1998), lacks the viewpoint of mutual composition. As mentioned above, a confu-
sion exists with regard to various other terms on appropriation because of the lim-
ited number of studies. In the next section, we show that appropriation can overcome
the abovementioned problems of internalization.
214 M. Matsushima
10.4 Appropriation as a Concept to Overcome the Problems

of Internalization
In this section, we show that appropriation can overcome the three problems of
internalization mentioned in the previous section. First, problems 1 and 2 can be
overcome with the features of the dynamic and mutual composition. The sociocul-
tural approach in psychology defines internalization as the reconstruction of an indi-
vidual’s knowledge through interaction with others (Vygotsky, 1978). This
internalization was shown as the entire process of reconstructing the knowledge of
an individual, triggered by interaction with others in the activity. Later, this was
developed as the reconstruction of knowledge in social processes between individu-
als (Leont’ev, 1974). In both of these processes, the learner’s existing knowledge
and experience contribute to the reconstruction of new knowledge. To overcome
problems 1 and 2 of internalization, we need to emphasize that appropriation is an
active concept with an aspect of bidirectional concept formation between individu-
als and learning communities. Appropriation allows learners of all ages, expertise
levels, and interests to return to the learning community the ideas and knowledge
they have dedicated to their desires and the zones of proximal development of the
learning that they are working on (Brown et al., 1993), with the individuals and
learning communities influencing each other. That is, appropriation is a concept
with dynamic and mutual composition. Therefore, it can be seen as a concept to
overcome problems 1 and 2 of internalization.
Second, we examine whether appropriation can overcome problem 3 of internal-
ization. Both dynamic and mutual composition only outline the mechanism of
appropriation. Therefore, we refer to the extended model in Fig. 10.1 and examine
the mechanism in detail. Consider the subject in Fig. 10.1. The learning community
can be small groups of two to four people or have the size of a whole class. In a
learning community of any size, multiple people continue to speak in turn. When
learner A speaks, A is the only one speaking, with the others listening. Next, learner
B speaks, representing the learning community responding to A’s utterance. B’s
utterance represents that of the learning community, but it corresponds to A’s utter-
ance. If we consider a certain utterance as the starting point of a dialogue, we need
to note that the individual speakers change one after another, but the moment of
dialogue is an individual-to-individual dialogue. Dialogue in a learning community
can be considered the accumulation of individual-to-individual dialogue in the
learning community. Therefore, basically two learners form the structure of the
social interaction of dialogue in the learning community. However, Fig. 10.1 shows
the model of three learners as an ellipse. Of the three learners, two are real learners
and the third is the learning community as a virtual learner. If we consider the learn-
ing community as a virtual learner with some information about the learning target,
the model in Fig. 10.1 illustrates a three-party dialogue model. Although we need
not increase the elements of consideration when examining the learner’s concept
formation, we need to include the learning community as an element of consider-
ation from sociocultural perspective, because, from the standpoint of it, learners
need to be included in the history and culture of the learning community, implicitly
restricting appropriation. Furthermore, the existence of appropriation may become
clear when the constraints of the learning community are also considered. This is
because the difference in concepts that learners A and B have appropriated and the
difference in concepts that the learning community has as seen by learners A and B,
are clarified. These deviations are unique to the learners because they are con-
strained by the existing conventions and experiences of learners A and B (Newman
et al., 1989). This difference in concepts of the learning community from the per-
spectives of learners A and B, or the difference in the concept that they appropriate,
will be useful to interpret the process of deepening mathematics learning and
develop lesson designs that would be easy for children to make sense.
Next, we consider the specific appropriation process shown in Fig. 10.1. This is
to show how the process of appropriation differs between the appropriation of the
speaker and the listener. Here, we use a simplified symbol to clarify the process of
concept formation. Let A(x) show that learner A is in the state of concept x about the
learning object and B(α) show that learner B is in the state of concept α about the
learning object. The state of concept x shared by the learning community from the
perspective of learner A is shown as CA(x), and the partial transformation of the state
of learner A’s concept x into state x1 is shown as A(x1). Here, we assume that learner
A begins to talk about concept x and learner B is just listening.
First, learner A (speaker) publishes his/her sign use with regard to concept x for
the first time in the public/individual domain. This is publication 1. This utterance
gives the learning community’s consent 1 or criticism 1 in the public/collective
domain. Learner A’s first appropriation in response to consent 1 and criticism 1
occurs in the private/collective domain and the private/individual domain. This is
appropriation 1. Following appropriation 1, the cycle proceeds to new publication 2.
Here, we need to note the content of consent 1 or critique 1. If the learning com-
munity agrees to the publication of learner A, learner A’s concept remains A(x) and
the appropriation dynamic composition does not work. Then, the learning commu-
nity from the viewpoint of learner A becomes CA(x) owing to the appropriation’s
mutual composition. However, when the use of learner A’s sign is criticized, learner
A would transform the concept into a partially transformed version x1 or completely
different version y, that is, A(x1) or A(y). This is a transformation in concept due to
the appropriation dynamic composition. The concept of learning community from
the viewpoint of learner A owing to mutual composition is CA(x1) or CA(y). Table 10.1
shows learner A’s appropriation 1 process as a speaker. The transformation of
learner A’s concepts in this way indicates the transformation of learner A’s method
of using signs.
Table 10.1 Learner A’s appropriation 1 process as a speaker

Initial state Consent or criticism from Learner A Learner A’s concept of
of concept the learning community Appropriation 1 concept learning community
A(x) Consent 1 A(x) A(x) CA(x)
Criticism 1 A(x1) or A(y) A(x1) or CA(x1) or CA(y)
A(y)
216 M. Matsushima
Next, we consider learner B’s appropriation 1 process as a dialogue listener. Let

B(α) be the initial state of learner B’s concept as a listener. Publication of A(x) is not
the same from the perspective of learner B and A because it is subject to historical
and cultural restrictions based on learner B’s existing conventions and experiences,
interpreted as a partially transformed x2. This is expressed as AB(x2). This AB(x2)
indicates the state of learner A’s concept as interpreted by learner B. To analyze
learner B’s appropriation process as a listener, we need to classify appropriation
situations. First, we have three cases: the learning community agrees with, partially
denies, and completely denies AB(x2). At the same time, after obtaining consent,
partial negation, and complete denial of the learning community with regard to
CB(x2), learner B needs to agree with his/her own concept α, partially deny it, or
completely deny it, representing the three cases. Therefore, this will be divided into
nine cases, that is, 3 × 3. The second is the classification based on the relationship
between the concept x2 and the concept α. Here, we have four cases: concept x2 and
concept α are independent, they have partial intersection, concept α contains con-
cept x2, and concept x2 contains concept α. Depending on these combinations, the
classification results in 9 × 4 = 36 cases. Strict case classification requires more
detailed case classification, for example, whether the partial negation part is at the
intersection of the two concepts, to result in 36 or more cases. However, the purpose
of making this table is to show how appropriation modifies the original concept,
rather than analyze its detailed processes. The paper therefore discusses appropria-
tion considering only a part, that is, 24 of the basic 36 cases. Table 10.2 shows the
process analysis of learner B’s appropriation 1 as a listener using the above simpli-
fied symbols and case classification.
The symbols in Table 10.2 are described in a supplementary explanation. In col-
umn No. 1 appropriation 1, “AB(x2), B(α)” indicates that the state of concept of
learner B includes two kinds of concepts, AB(x2) and B(α). In column No. 2, “AB(x2)
+ B(α)” indicates that learner B appropriates the concept combining the two con-
cepts of AB(x2) and B(α). Thus, column No. 2 shows that the state of concept of
learner B transforms into the B(α1), which is an extension of B(α). In column No. 3,
“AB(x2) ⊃ B(α)” indicates that concept x2 contains concept α. In column No. 6, the
partially denied part of learner B’s concept α is expressed as concept Bsub(α). The
concept excluding the partially denied Bsub(α) from B(α) is “B(α) – Bsub(α)”. Learner
B then appropriates the idea of adding the concept to AB(x2) and shows that the con-
cept of learner B has been transformed into B(α3). In column No. 9 appropriation 1,
“￢B(α)” indicates the complete denial of concept α.
From Table 10.1, concept A(x) of learner A may be of three types, A(x), A(x1),
and A(y), through an appropriation. Moreover, from the perspective of learner A, the
concept of the learning community may be of three types, CA(x), CA(x1), and CA(y),
through an appropriation.
In Table 10.2, concept B(α) of learner B may become B(α), B(α1), B(α2), B(α3),
B(α4), B(α5), B(α6), B(α7), B(x2), B(x3), and B(x4) through an appropriation. The con-
cept of the learning community can also be of two types, CB(x2) and CB (x3), from
the perspective of learner B. Table 10.2 is an extract of a part of learner B’s appro-
priation 1 process. Therefore, at least 11 types of concept transformations and two
Table 10.2 Learner B’s appropriation process as a listener (partial excerpt)

State of Relationship
the between the Learner B’s
concept concepts of Learner concept of
of AB(x2) AB(x2) and B’s learning
No. and (α) B(α) Appropriation 1 concept community
1 AB(x2): Independence AB(x2), B(α) B(x2), CB(x2)
Agree B(α)
2 B(α): Have a partial AB(x2) + B(α) B(α1) CB(x2)
Agree intersection
3 AB(x2) AB(x2) ⊃ B(α) B(x2) CB(x2)
contains B(α)
4 B(α) contains B(α) ⊃ AB(x2) B(α) CB(x2)
AB(x2)
5 AB(x2): Independence AB(x2), B(α) − Bsub(α) B(x2), CB(x2)
agree B(α2)
6 B(α): Have a partial AB(x2) + {B(α) − Bsub(α)} B(α3) CB(x2)
Partial intersection
7 negation AB(x2) None None None
contains B(α)
8 B(α) contains {B(α) − Bsub(α)} ⊃ AB(x2) B(α4) CB(x2)
AB(x2)
9 AB(x2): Independence AB(x2), ¬ B(α) B(x2) CB(x2)
10 agree Have a partial None None None
B(α): intersection
11 Complete A (x ) None None None
B 2
denial contains B(α)
12 B(α) contains None None None
AB(x2)
13 AB(x2) Independence AB(x2) − ABsub(x2), B(α) B(x3), CB(x3)
Partial B(α)
14 negation Have a partial AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} + B(α)
{
B(α5) CB(x3)
B(α): intersection
15 Agree AB(x2) {AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} ⊃ B(α) B(x3) CB(x3)
contains B(α)
16 B(α) contains B(α) ⊃ {AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} B(α) CB(x3)
AB(x2):
17 AB(x2) :
Independence AB(x2) − ABsub(x2), B(α) − Bsub(α) B(x3), CB(x3)
Partial B(α6)
18 negation Have a partial {AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} + {B(α) − Bsub(α)} B(α7) CB(x3)
B(α): intersection
19 Partial AB(x2) {AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} ⊃ B(α) B(x3) CB(x3)
negation contains B(α)
20 B(α) contains {
B(α) − Bsub(α)} ⊃ {AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} B(α6) CB(x3)
AB(x2)
21 AB(x2): Independence AB(x2) − ABsub(x2), ¬ B(α) B(x3) CB(x3)
22 Partial Have a partial {AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} − B(α) B(x4) CB(x3)
negation intersection
23 B(α): AB(x2) {AB(x2) − ABsub(x2)} − B(α) B(x4) CB(x3)
Complete contains B(α)
denial
24 B(α) contains None None None
AB(x2)
218 M. Matsushima
types of learning community concepts may occur in an appropriation from the lis-
tener learner’s perspective. What is important here is that the appropriation as both
speaker and listener changes the concept of both the learner and learning commu-
nity through the appropriation process. The learner and learning community are
thus connected.
In addition, note the difference between the speaker’s and the listener’s appro-
priation variations. When the learning community agrees on concept x of speaker A,
the concept of the speaker becomes A(x), the concept of the learning community
from the speaker A’s perspective becomes CA(x), and the concept of the learning
community from the listener B’s perspective becomes CB(x2). The three concepts are
fixed but are not exactly equal. However, if AB(x2) is agreed upon when the concept
of listener B is α, the concept of listener B may become one of six types, B(x2), B(α),
B(α1), B(α2), B(α3), and B(α4), and not exactly match A(x), CA(x), and CB(x2). In
particular, when the listener B’s concept is not B(x2), the variation of difference
between learner B and others has many possibilities. This difference is present in
almost all cases, whether or not the speaker’s concept is partially or completely
denied. Even if the speaker and listener participate in the same dialogue, their
appropriations may differ. This process is likely to lead to a different concept for the
listener rather than speaker. Even in case of slight difference between the two con-
cepts due to appropriation, if the listener only listens to the dialogue continues with-
out speaking, the difference in concept with others may widen as the dialogue
progresses.
Whether the learner is a speaker or listener, the appropriation process described
above transforms the concept of the individual by triggering the publication of the
concept, and the concept of the learning community also transforms accordingly.
Thus, appropriation can completely solve internalization problems 1 and 2. The
appropriation process analyzed so far reveals a certain degree of the process.
However, it is difficult to say that problem 3 internalization, that is, how to know the
thoughts and intentions of others, has been clarified. In the next section, we consider
the process of appropriation based on intersubjectivity and try to solve internaliza-
tion problem 3.
10.5 Relationship Between Appropriation Process

and Intersubjectivity
How can people know the thoughts and intentions of others? This is an issue at the
starting point of appropriation also. We consider this from the perspective of inter-
subjectivity. Lerman (1996) argues that intersubjectivity has three aspects: aspects
that become a subject through social practice, aspects of cognition contextualized in
practice, and aspects of mathematics as cultural knowledge (Lerman, 1996,
pp.142–147). Understanding others through intersubjectivity in practice leads to
self-construction. Historical and cultural restrictions affect the connection and these
restrictions are applied in mathematics learning. In other words, intersubjectivity
refers to the ability to understand the thoughts of others in practice. Intersubjectivity

in mathematics learning is the starting point of mathematics practice for the learn-
ing community. In the learning community, self and others are not separate but con-
nected in practice (Roth & Radford, 2011).
How is intersubjectivity possible while understanding the thoughts of others?
Steffe and Thompson (2000) argue that intersubjectivity can be built through dia-
logue and interaction with others. However, Lerman (2000, 2001) shows that inter-
subjectivity occurs in an individual’s mind before the actual interaction takes place
with others. The timing for intersubjectivity to occur could differ.
Let us examine this difference from the perspective of developmental psychol-
ogy. In developmental psychology, intersubjectivity is defined generally as a “pro-
cess in which mental activity - including motives and emotions - is transferred
between minds” (Legerstee, 2009, p. 3). This concept of intersubjectivity is an
important factor in the development of the theory of mind and is divided into two
types, primary intersubjectivity and secondary intersubjectivity, for discussion.
Primary intersubjectivity is the “innate or early-developing sensory-motor
capacities that bring us into relation with others and allow us to interact with them”
(Gallagher, 2013, p.60). When a two- or three-month-old baby tries to convey his/
her subjective mood through certain expression, the caregiver, for example, the
mother, generates expressions that follow the baby’s expressions. Infants have then
been reported to pay attention to their caregiver’s expressions and imitate them
(Trevarthen, 1979). The caregiver’s expression is also a specialized form tailored to
the baby and complements the baby’s expressions (Trevarthen, 1979). This period
of primary intersubjectivity is the binary relational period when the interaction
between the baby-other and baby-objects becomes conspicuous (Legerstee, 2005).
Secondary intersubjectivity develops around 9 to 12 months after birth, connect-
ing infants- objects-others and helping them gain new awareness (Trevarthen &
Hubley, 1978). It is based on primary intersubjectivity. For example, assume that an
infant is playing with blocks in front of his mother. If he happens to pile up the
blocks well, his mother will exaggerate the act, and smile for him. His attention will
then shift from the building blocks to his mother, intuitively noticing his mother’s
joy and praise, and again shifting his attention to the building blocks in an uplifting
mood. This shift of infant-objects-mother’s attention and the accompanying intui-
tive understanding of intention can help the infant gradually become aware of the
triad relationship with self, objects, and others. “In secondary intersubjectivity,
interaction is shaped by joint attention and the surrounding environment” (Gallagher,
2013, p.64).
In developmental psychology discussions of intersubjectivity, human beings are
considered to have the following two abilities: the ability to intuitively see the inten-
tions of others within the binary relationship of baby-caregiver and baby-object
through innate or early-developing primary intersubjectivity, and the ability to intui-
tively know the intentions of others and be aware of the objects in the interaction of
the triad relationship with others regarding the objects around the first year of life.
This discussion of intersubjectivity in developmental psychology clarifies that inter-
subjectivity should not be regarded as consent through children’s dialogue. As
220 M. Matsushima
intersubjectivity occurs in infants without language speech, it is the ability to intui-

tively notice the intentions of others even when interacting with others without lan-
guage. Thus, intersubjectivity should not be viewed as taken-as-shared (Cobb,
1999) through interaction in the learning community, including language and rea-
soning (Lerman, 2000). We will next consider the relationship between appropria-
tion and intersubjectivity.
According to the extended model in Fig. 10.1, sign use is conventionalized in the
public/collective domain and can be appropriated in the private/collective domain.
Appropriation will be further advanced in the private/individual domain. The con-
ventionalized sign is used in the private/collective domain as a mere imitation with-
out reflection. In other words, it is the stage where the learner intuitively grasps the
meaning of signs as conventionalized by the learning community and begins to use
them in the same way. This is the intersubjective understanding of the sign use con-
ventionalized in the learning community. In developmental psychology, intuitive
awareness without language use is called intersubjectivity, but in normal mathemat-
ical learning, learning progresses through language. Therefore, the intersubjectivity
of the learner at school can be reconsidered as intuitively becoming aware of the
meaning of the learning object in the interaction using language. In the private/
individual domain, the meaning captured intersubjectively is reconstructed through
reflective thinking with connecting learners’ own knowledge and experiences, and
the method of sign use is reconsidered. Historical and cultural constraints can influ-
ence reflective thinking. The human-specific ability of intersubjectivity allows us to
understand the intentions of others and deepen the meaning of the individual based
on them. This is in line with the sociocultural approach principle of prioritizing the
social aspects of the development of meaning (Vygotsky, 1978).
So far, we discussed appropriation as a concept to overcome internalization
problem 3. Thus, appropriation was shown to involve two processes: intersubjectiv-
ity and reflective thinking. Correspondingly in Figure 10.1, it can be said that the
first appropriation from the public/collective domain to the private/collective
domain is made mainly by intersubjectivity, and the second appropriation to the
private/individual domain is made mainly by reflective thinking. As the appropria-
tion process has been clarified to some extent, the problem of internalization can be
overcome. Then, by clarifying the relationship between appropriation and intersub-
jectivity, a connection can be created between individual learners and the learning
community, as in participatory appropriation (Rogoff, 1995). This connection will
allow us to continue to create new meanings dynamically and mutually.
10.6 Two Meanings of Deviation in Appropriation
In this section, we focus on the deviation in appropriation and discuss it from the
perspective of the weaknesses and strengths of appropriation. First, we discuss devi-
ation as a weakness. From the discussion so far, it is clear that the concept of speaker
and community may easily deviate from the concept of listener in the process of
appropriation. This can be observed from Tables 10.1 and 10.2 too. These
deviations may become even greater as the dialogue progresses and could be a
major problem.
Here, we refer to the extended model in Fig. 10.1. A learner who does not speak
but only listens to a dialogue does not pass through the public/individual domain in
Fig. 10.1. However, appropriation begins after passing through the public/collective
domain. Thus, learners can appropriate and enrich their own concepts to some
extent by just listening to the utterances of others. After appropriation begins, the
focus changes to whether to pass through the private/individual domain before lis-
tening to the next utterance of another person. One can go through the private/indi-
vidual domain to the public/collective domain or to go to the public/collective
domain without passing through that domain. In Fig. 10.2, the former learner fol-
lows the path of the “dashed line a.” After appropriation begins, this process is as
follows: reflect on the existing conventions and experiences, advance the appropria-
tion, transform one’s own concept, and listen to the next utterance. Clearly, this
listener is thinking reflectively while listening to the utterance of others. A listener
who self- regulates his/her own concept while listening to others’ stories using
reflective thinking is called an active listener (Kosko, 2014). An active listener ful-
fills the feature of dynamic composition. However, we cannot find a process that
leads to the learning community from individual thoughts because this learner does
not disclose his/her thoughts to others. In Fig. 10.2, no arrow connects the private/
individual domain to the public/individual domain. Thus, the learning community
and learner are connected not in both directions, but in only one direction, that is,
from the public/collective domain. In this situation, mutual composition does not
work well. In addition, because learners do not disclose their thoughts, the gap in
appropriation remains. As the dialogue progresses, the gap is likely to increase.
Active listeners who only listen to dialogues can deepen their learning; on the other
hand, if they have differences with speakers, they are unlikely to be able to reduce
differences. Further, they cannot contribute to concept formation of the learning
community. This is a problem for learners who are active listeners.
Next, we consider the latter learner. This learner listens to the thoughts of others,
begins to appropriate them without reflective thinking, listens to the next utterance
of others, and re- appropriates them without reflective thinking. This is a cycle
through the “dashed line b” in Fig. 10.2. Such learners often focus solely on prob-
lem solving and the superficial methods of others. For example, they may obtain the
answer to a problem from another person and feel relieved if the answer is the same,
or may ask another person how to solve the problem and follow the solution without
inquiring further. If the answer is different or they have a question about how to
solve the problem, reflective thinking intervenes to find a reason. In this case, the
learner becomes a learner as active listener and hence becomes the former learner.
The learner who does not think reflectively has little effect on the dynamic composi-
tion of the concept. Moreover, because the appropriation here is not bidirectionally
connected to the learning community, it does not have a mutual composition. In
other words, appropriation of learners who do not work reflective thinking just by
listening to the thoughts of others becomes very superficial. This is the problem of
the latter learner.
222 M. Matsushima
Fig. 10.2 An extended model for the learner as a non-speaking listener
Thus, we highlight the features of appropriation once again. Appropriation is the

inner working where the thoughts of individuals who are connected from the public/
collective domain to the private/individual domain via the private/collective domain
work together. Sufficient appropriation requires two functions: intersubjectivity and
reflective thinking.
So far, we considered two problems with appropriation deviation. However, the
appropriation should be in the appropriate direction of the aim of learning. How can
we ensure that our appropriation is proper? The answers to this question are pre-
sented in Tables 10.1 and 10.2. From a comparison of the number of concepts in
Tables 10.1 and 10.2, Table 10.1 is extremely small. This indicates that if the appro-
priation is repeated for the speaker of the dialogue, the probability of approaching
the proper use of sign is high. A more proper sign use can be achieved by repeating
the appropriation only by listening, but the probability of achievement would be low
because there are many types of concepts that can occur after appropriation.
Repeating the appropriation as speaker of the dialogue may enhance its appropriate-
ness. If we are asked, “Why does dialogue deepen mathematics learning?,” we can
answer this from the standpoint of a sociocultural approach: “If you repeat your
appropriation as a speaker of dialogue, you can use the concept of mathematics
appropriately because the appropriateness of appropriation increases.” However, if
we are asked, “Will mathematics learning deepen without dialogue?,” our answer
could be, “It’s not that it does not deepen, but it’s less likely that the direction of
deepening is appropriate than if you were the speaker of the dialogue.” The appro-
priation can be made more proper by becoming the speaker of the dialogue.
Second, we consider the deviation of appropriation as a feature. The appropria-
tion process is referred to as a “quite general process that can account for the emer-
gent creativity of social interactions and the growth of flexible expertise in learners”
(Newman et al., 1989, p.143). The process of becoming an adaptive proficient can
be explained by the chain of appropriation and the reduction in its gap by becoming
the speaker of the dialogue. In this study, we focus on its creativity. Where is cre-
ativity related to the appropriation process? This is its own deviation. Table 10.2
lists some of the possibilities of a wide variety of deviations. This includes the gap
between the concepts of the learners interacting with each other and between the
concepts of the learning community as seen by each learner. The cause of these
deviations lies in the learners’ historical and cultural constraints. By interacting
according to these deviations, each learner may misunderstand what he/she is talk-
ing about. Simultaneously, the learner may create a new concept not included in the
speaker’s concept. In other words, the deviation of appropriation can be the source
of creativity that leads to new ideas that the speaker did not intend. Fig. 10.2 shows
the possibility of creating a new concept based on the deviation from the original
concept. Therefore, deviation in appropriation can be a good feature.
10.7 Reconsideration of Appropriation Features
As mentioned earlier, appropriation is a “process that has as its end result the indi-
vidual’s reproduction of historically formed human properties, capacities, and
modes of behavior” (Leontyev, 1981, p.422).” In this definition, the word “histori-
cal” is supposed to express the historical and cultural constraints and mutual com-
position. However, the phrase “as its end result” obscures the dynamic composition.
In addition, in this study, we reconsidered the process of appropriation based on two
features, dynamic composition and mutual composition, and the extended model in
Fig. 10.1, which roughly depicts the process of appropriation. The following char-
acteristics have been pointed out in this research so far: the possibility of conceptual
deviation between the speaker, listener, and learning community; intersubjectivity
and reflective thinking in appropriation; appropriateness of appropriation; and cre-
ativity of appropriation. Therefore, the features of appropriation are summarized in
the following six features.
Feature 1 (dynamic composition):Gradually forming one’s concept by speaking,
while borrowing the concept of others.
Feature 2 (mutual composition):The concept of learning community is formed in
the process of forming the concept of self.
Feature 3 (constraints and deviations):
Deviations occur in individual concept generation owing to historical and cultural
restrictions of the learning community.
224 M. Matsushima
Feature 4 (intersubjectivity and reflective thinking):

Appropriation is begun with the awareness of others’ intentions from intersubjectiv-
ity and is transformed one’s concept through own reflective thinking.
Feature 5 (appropriateness):
Becoming a speaker in dialogue enhances the appropriateness of appropriation.
Feature 6 (creativity):Deviation in appropriation creates new ideas.
10.8 Future Research
In this study, we reconsidered the concept of appropriation from a sociocultural

perspective. We thus clarified the process of appropriation and presented its six
features. These features will be useful when analyzing the process of appropriation.
In addition, because many studies in the literature are related to the formation of
individual concepts, a future research topic could be to compare and consider the
process of appropriation of the learning community and individual learners. This
comparative study will allow the formulation of a lesson design that would be easy
for all children to understand. Objectification and subjectification are concepts of
similar to appropriation that can be considered. Research on appropriation is an on-
going process.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dr. Hiroo Matsumoto and Dr. Yuki Suginomoto, Faculty
of Education, Kagawa University, for their valuable comments on the draft. I would also like to
express my gratitude to them here. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number
JP19K14204, JP22K13708.
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Chapter 11
Towards a Philosophy of Algorithms
as an Element of Mathematics Education
Regina D. Möller and Peter Collignon
11.1 Different Roles of Algorithms Throughout History
Before we concentrate on the meaning of algorithms in math education and in math

classes, we outline the history of algorithms within mathematics to give a basis for
the discussion. Nowadays the concept of algorithms is used in a rather broad range,
since many subject matters refer to this notion, and they shape it along the respective
desired usefulness or requirements. In the following, we describe the changes within
history.
The history of algorithms as part of mathematics started in the very early days,
as the systematic solving of mathematical problems is part of doing mathematics.
The various algorithms were of different nature because they had different roles. For
example, in Ancient Greece, Euclid (300 BC) gave a rule to calculate the greatest
common divisor of two given natural numbers. Another well-known algorithm is
the sieve of Eratosthenes, a step-by-step procedure selecting prime numbers from a
given finite subset of the natural numbers. Both are widely accepted as subject
matters on the level of elementary math classes throughout Europe and beyond.
These examples show already the role of algorithms as simplifying tools for
arithmetic procedures.
Several hundred years later, Al-Khwarizmi (approx. 780–850 AD) presented
many mathematical applications for traders. Moreover, his oeuvre shows his insight
in the significance of the digit “zero” (Vogel, 1963), which had an important impact
on performing algorithms. Some of the mathematical rules were later on translated
R. D. Möller (*)
Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: moellreg@hu-berlin.de
P. Collignon
University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
228 R. D. Möller and P. Collignon
into Latin with the title “Algorithmi,” containing the artificial word “arithmos” that
is derived from “number” and the name of the mathematician (cf. Chabert, 1999).
All these algorithms were published for a circle of interested contemporary
mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers and for future reference. At that time,
these publications of various algorithms stood for a common approach regarding
mathematical thinking and communicating.
Later, the published elementary calculations of Adam Ries (1492–1559 AD),
who wrote a booklet (1574) on basic arithmetic operations (Deschauer, 1992), are
an outstanding example for the use of algorithms because this publishing had great
influence on his German-speaking contemporaries. He provided the reader with
algorithmic procedures with respect to the four basic arithmetic operations (Möller,
2002), which entails addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. His
publication had caused an “educational” enlightenment for the contemporary
citizenship because the role that algorithms played in his books had a strong
informative and educational impact at the same time. Knowing algorithms at that
time helped the citizens to compute independently, and they did not need to hire a
“Rechenmeister” any more in order to get arithmetic problems solved by paying for
the solutions (Deschauer, 1992).
Further efforts followed a hundred years later from Leibniz (1646–1716) who
used a binary code to design a predecessor of what we now call a computer. Ada
Lovelace (1815–1852) followed him two centuries later as the first woman to write
a complex version of what we name today a computer code. In the middle of the
twentieth century, John von Neuman (1903–1957) and Alan Turing (1912–1954)
built the ground for theoretical computer science. Eventually the development
during the last 70 years shows a huge field of algorithmic applications.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the technical development of comput-
ers entailed an accelerated development of algorithms. Their distribution occurred
rather hidden by new technical devices such as mainframe computers, home- and
personal computers, and, later on, tablets and mobile phones. The use of the algo-
rithms immanent in various tools was often taken for granted.
The role that algorithms have played since the middle of the last century is a
fundamentally different one compared to the one they played only several decades
before. Then, the knowledge of algorithmic procedures helped the citizens to
become independent because they could solve the problems independently.
Similarly, concepts such as the greatest common divisor and the least common
multiple were taught and the related algorithms applied. However, the contemporary
user of applications employs algorithms of which he is often not even aware.
As observed, algorithms play an important role in the development of mathemat-
ics. Naturally, they therefore are an essential subject in math classes. Taking into
account the significance of fundamental ideas (Führer, 1997) as well as the postulate
that math classes should develop and foster general education (Heymann, 2013), the
concept of algorithms should be therefore in the center of didactical
considerations.
11 Towards a Philosophy of Algorithms as an Element of Mathematics Education 229
11.2 The Traditional Role of Algorithms in Math Classes
As clarified in the first section, the algorithms themselves and their significance in
everyday life as well as in mathematics classes have changed over the centuries.
During the period of the ancient Greek mathematics, algorithms consisted of
arithmetic procedures. In the twentieth century, we face a new phenomenon, as
there is a strong tendency hiding algorithms behind technical devices. In how far do
these changes influence the impacts of algorithms, especially in mathematics
classes?
In the last 30 years, the role of algorithms, nowadays understood as a fundamen-
tal idea and their importance for mathematics education, has undergone substantial
changes. This gives reason for defining an appropriate postulate for actual math
classes as response to everyday life experiences, influenced or even determined by
algorithms. From a philosophical point of view, new questions arise that can be
considered within the framework of (post-) modernism and within a constructivist
approach since the nature of algorithms suggests this access of reflection.
By analogy with the spiral principle, often applied to teach numbers, it seems
plausible to structure the school curricula with algorithmic endeavors likewise in a
spiral way, following Bruner (1976). Modern mathematics lessons are characterized
by the use of algorithms and their careful reflection, accompanied by various
devices. This relates to primary and secondary level as well.
Already in elementary school, even the four basic arithmetic operations, per-
formed on paper, are of algorithmic nature. Furthermore, prime numbers are found
within a finite set that is called the sieve of Eratosthenes. This includes electronic
devices such as pocket calculators and modern hard- and software in general as well
as non-electronic instruments such as the abacus and calculi. Additionally, algorith-
mizing mathematical teaching on the primary level is increasingly supported by a
variety of software. Contemporary examples for the primary level are the
ActivInspire, ClassFlow (Promethean), and the Learning Suite software (SMART).
Textbook publishers (Klett, Cornelsen, etc.) provide interactive whiteboard images
on their websites, offer digital material to accompany the textbooks they publish,
and in some cases also have learning programs in their range. The Calliope Mini is
available on the manufacturer’s website with a collection of various applications in
the classroom. With its Education series, LEGO also has various offers for the use
of programmable, digital artifacts. Additionally worth mentioning are the products
Dash, Ozobot, Thymio, Bee-Bot, Makey-Makey, Little-Bits, Cubelets, Matatalab
Coding Set, mTiny, Scratch, and Snap, all of which were developed with a view to
possible use in educational contexts and some of which already have suggestions
for use in mathematics lessons.
In secondary school, linear equations can be solved by a step-by-step-procedure.
Additionally, students on this level need to sketch curves, and they perform this task
often in a way that is more or less algorithmic. With the Gaussian algorithm, systems
of equations are solved. In recent years, students have started using geometric and
algebraic software (CAS, DGS, Mathematica), often not being aware of the hidden
algorithms driving these tools. Essentially, they use the tools like a black box.
The use of devices supporting the teaching and learning of mathematics came a
long way. Long before the tools were electrified, various instruments suited for the
realization of certain algorithms mattered. Moreover, one can observe a methodical
algorithmization of mathematics itself, independent of machines (Krämer, 1988). In
the following, we aim at a common view on more or less modern electronic devices,
traditional appliances based on mechanical principles and eventually the
formalization of algorithmic approaches within mathematics.
11.3 Changes in the Phenomena of Algorithms Resulting

in Challenges for Math Classes
The role that algorithms play within technical devices is a fundamentally different
one compared to the one they played before. Nowadays, the user of applications
uses algorithms of which he is often not even aware.
The content of the curriculum for algorithms in math classes neither gives an
overview nor does it exemplify typical algorithms used in todays’ IT tools. Looking
at the entire school time, we therefore question the role the curricula play in regard
to the fundamental idea of algorithm. Our critique aims at the non-fulfilled task in
this field since it does not reflect the actual common use in rapidly changing times
(Ernest, 2016, p. 12).
One could divide the devices into those with and those without electricity. In
earlier days, the focus of teaching within mathematics classes was influenced by the
use of devices such as the abacus, slide rules, and logarithmic tables. Generally
speaking, algorithmic thinking starts in school with the four basic calculations, after
all in written form. However, these calculations are usually done without naming
them as algorithms.
The naming of algorithms in school (or math classes) started just some 30 years
ago in Germany which goes along with the discussion of the fundamental ideas.
Especially in the last 10 years, tools such as bots and others were introduced in math
classes with the idea that schoolchildren need to learn algorithmic thinking. With
the help of these tools, the children are expected to get a first access to algorithms
and even to simple programming. One assumes that this fosters algorithmic thinking,
which should start on an elementary level.
Against the background of the temporary German separation, we present in the
following a very short overview that depends on the different pedagogical and
philosophical background of the Federal and Democratic German Republic,
respectively. It is an example for two independent developments and the partly
insufficient reflection.
Weigand (2003) provides an overview of the role of the pocket calculator in the
federal states of the former Federal Republic of Germany in comparison to the
former German Democratic Republic. On the basis of these considerations, lessons

for the present and future use of the computer in mathematics education can be
derived.
In Germany, the slide rule was admitted as an aid on an equal footing with loga-
rithmic tables in 1925. In the Federal Republic of Germany, these tools were
replaced by a standardized slide rule in 1958 by resolution of the Conference of
Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs. They were subsequently also used in
lower secondary education. The first pocket calculator came onto the market in the
Federal Republic of Germany in 1972; in 1974, sales figures were at a temporary
peak. It was approved for use in mathematics classes starting in 1976, usually from
grade 7. In the German Democratic Republic, the pocket calculator (“SR1”) was
introduced into the school curriculum in 1985, also usually from grade 7.
As goals, the German Society for Didactics of Mathematics (GDM) demanded
in a statement in 1978:
• The facilitation of experimental student activities within the framework of learn-
ing by discovering (“Entdeckendes Lernen”) and problem solving
• A concrete numerical starting point for conceptual formations
• The realistic handling of application tasks by means of numbers appropriate
to reality
• The relief of activities which are not of central importance for the solution of the
task at hand
• Access to algorithmic thinking
• Problem-adequate practical phases
In retrospect, it can be said that these goals were only partially achieved. A long-
term careful preparation and a timely and elaborated didactical theory were and are
missing. Essentially, previous exercise and task formats were now also processed
with the help of the calculator. Weigand (2003) merely notes a certain increase in
trigonometric tasks to be treated numerically, accompanied by an increasing
emphasis on stochastic topics.
In the German Democratic Republic, a report of the Academy of Pedagogical
Sciences was published in 1979 calling for empirical monitoring of the introduction
of the pocket calculator. In Fanghänel and Flade (1979), the notion of “arithmetic
culture” was emphasized in this context, which was directed against a surrender of
arithmetic skills. It is noticeable that early on the discussion was also devoted to the
“design” of pocket calculators, for example, regarding the question of whether it
should abbreviate the arithmetic processes of calculating percentages. What
remained controversial was the role of calculating aids for weaker students, who on
the one hand (superficially) benefited from the pocket calculator, but on the other
hand – partly – had their strengths in relation to “simple” arithmetic.
Both in the Federal Republic and in the German Democratic Republic, the intro-
duction of the pocket calculator was viewed critically by parts of the teaching com-
munity. Motives ranged from concerns about students’ arithmetic skills to a feared
distortion of the concerns of mathematics education. It has not been sufficiently
investigated to what extent subjective motives such as individual insecurity already
played a role. Roughly speaking, the ideological differences in these two societies
are reflected by the educational politics. It may be assumed that many teachers were
aware that a didactically consistent introduction of the calculator would have to
result in far-reaching changes with regard to the teaching procedures.
In the Federal Republic, such changes have been addressed by Kirsch (1985),
among others, and he stated that now the interest even turned to computers “even
before the existence of simple pocket calculators and their – actual or desirable –
effects on mathematics teaching had been satisfactorily worked out or realized in
practice.”
11.4 Towards a Philosophical Approach of the Meanings

of Algorithms
In the following, we start observing several aspects of algorithms that enlighten the
relationships to neighboring sciences.
11.4.1 Preliminary Philosophical Considerations
On the basis of the current situation, characterized by the wide availability of com-
puting speed and storage space, the algorithms, though hidden, generate an enor-
mous force. This fact leads to dramatic changes in everyday life and modern
economy (O’Neill, 2016). Furthermore, this process will continue, provided the
computing speed and the storage space is growing at the current rate.
All these developments lead to social and educational effects and phenomena of
which we have no previous experiences. These observations call for an investigation
from a philosophical point of view. With his contribution on philosophy of
mathematics education, Paul Ernest (2016) provides us with many and rather broad
questions for further detailed reflections. One of his questions refers to the
relationship between mathematics and society. This holds, because all devices of
information technology rely on mathematics in digital processes. Another of his
essential questions centers on the role of teaching and learning in fostering or
hindering critical citizenship. He also questions the functions that mathematics
performs in today’s society, and which of these are intended and visible. In the case
of modern use of algorithms, transparency is a delicate issue for very different
reasons; it is due to complexity culminating in hidden data collections or data mining.
Looking at educational aspects, Ernest (2016) poses the question: Does mathe-
matics education have an adequate and suitable philosophy of technology in order
to accommodate the essential issues raised by information and communication tech-
nology? This is of high relevance because the idea of the algorithm is a fundamental
one for math classes (Führer, 1997). For more than three decades, the notion has
been extended in particular regarding its meaning in daily routines. Meanwhile,

there is a great discrepancy between algorithms belonging to the curricular mathe-
matical topics versus the algorithms that build the foundation of modern informa-
tion technology, carrying us as far as the simulation of a human brain (e.g., artificial
intelligence).
Against this background, the question arises in how far mathematics instruction
should consider these challenges and find new ways to address them, that is, to what
extent and with which mathematical tools this might be achievable. The answers to
these questions are of crucial importance because society expects math topics and
their teaching to contribute to general education throughout the school years
(Heymann, 2013).
According to Heinrich Winter (1996), who stressed three basic experiences
(“Grundvorstellungen”), mathematics education should be designed in such a way
that it enables us to perceive and understand phenomena of the world around us,
which concern or should concern all of us, from nature, society, and culture, in a
significant way (first basic experience). There is no doubt that increasing digitization
produces phenomena that shape our contemporary everyday experiences, and they
do concern and influence us. These observations lead to the following questions:
How can mathematics education adequately meet the requirements arising
therefrom? How can it contribute to encountering the phenomena of digitization
from an enlightened perspective and with sound judgments?
For decades, the aim of many mathematics educators, especially Heinrich Winter
and Fischer and Malle (1985), consists in fostering a deep and integrated
mathematical understanding, in particular on the field of applications. The intentions
were focused on the interaction of mathematics, the issues of its applications and
everyday situations.
Engel (1977) pointed out early the necessity of a theoretical reappraisal of the
concept of algorithm. Shortly after the introduction of pocket calculators into
German school teaching and at the beginning of an increasing algorithmization of
mathematics teaching in the context of the emphasis on applications, he put the
algorithms as a fundamental idea on the same level as the concept of function: At
the turn of the century (meant here: the turn from the 19th to the 20th century –
authors’ note), Felix Klein initiated a reform of mathematics education. The reform
movement adapted the keyword “functional thinking.” The concept of functions
was to permeate the entire subject matter as a guiding concept. Due to the wide-
spread use of computers and calculators, the time has come for the next reform
represented by the keyword “algorithmic thinking”. The concept of algorithm
should serve as a guiding concept for school mathematics. We have to rethink the
whole school material from the algorithmic point of view (Engel, 1977, p. 5.
Translation by the authors).
Engel wrote this in the 1970s. It should be remembered that the Meran Reform,
especially stressing functional thinking (Vollrath, 1989), was not systematically
incorporated into school teaching in Germany until after the Second World War.
From some mathematics educators’ perspective, it can even be considered a failure
(Krüger, 2000).
11.4.2 Further Philosophical Observations
We need to pay attention to the conditions that caused today’s “explosion of algo-
rithms,” which is what Lyotard (1984) calls the “postmodern perspective.”
Accordingly, postmodernism calls for a skeptical view. For this purpose, we need to
take notice of the underlying meta-narratives, on which many different fields have
an impact. Therefore, analyzing (that means deconstructing) meta-narratives
requires retracing historical developments and the decisions made on the way. This
endeavor reveals choices that were taken along the historical genesis within each
relevant field. Information technology, the technical realization of algorithms, is
largely driven by the belief that the age of technology would bring nothing but
progress. This conviction about the ongoing technical progress is closely related to
the meta-narrative of perpetual economic growth.
What is needed today is a discussion about the role of contemporary mathemat-
ics instruction, especially if mathematics education still holds the claim of being
part of a broad general education, preparing also for future demands. This is achiev-
able through a social contract facing the new challenges arisen. It has to be clarified
to what extent school education should be responsible with regard to its pedagogical
task in general (Skovsmose, 2011).
At the same time, there is a need of including the curricula of other subjects
involved, such as information technology, social studies, and even, given an
appropriate opportunity, philosophy and theory of science. The main issue in
question is not of technical nature, but it is about the impact on math classes and
phenomena that were completely unknown until recently and that involve fascinating
opportunities and enormous threats at the same time. In any case, the perception of
(mathematics) education must reflect the corresponding processes.
The modern teaching of algorithms can be split into two aspects: one, which is
taught on the elementary level with a close relation to school mathematics and in
terms of a fundamental idea (Führer, 1997), and the other, where sophisticated
algorithms built in technical devices create new and complex phenomena. This
observation needs a reflection, especially a philosophical one, in how far math
classes should build a fundamental knowledge for these new phenomena under a
mathematical view.
11.4.3 Algorithms and Their Connections Within Sciences
Considering the two aspects mentioned above in detail, one can identify the rela-
tionships between the notion of algorithms and the field of mathematics itself, the
curricula for math education and, of course, the modern field of computer science.
All these relationships can be found in the broader framework of real-life situations,
whereby the use and the impact of algorithms as well as the related consequences
have undergone tremendous changes.
Nowadays, the algorithms behind apps and programs are mostly hidden.
Everyday examples are cash machines, ticket automats, and recent apps collecting
data relating to pandemic processes, not to mention social media. Many more
algorithms can be part of business plans and therefore be looked upon trade secrets.
Examples are search machines as well as scoring procedures of any kind (O’Neill,
2016). As mentioned above, there are algorithmic procedures behind modern
machines and digitized tools that the average person is often not aware of in everyday
life. Meanwhile, the number of hidden algorithms radically outnumbers those
known and keeps growing daily (O’Neill, 2016).
With the ongoing digitization, algorithms must not only be looked upon as a part
of mathematics but also and self-evidently as an important part of computer science.
They constitute a major role for programming and are therefore a basis of
contemporary information technology. Figure 11.1 shows these relationships and
also some further correlations.
From the perspective of general and mathematics education, the concept of algo-
rithms as part of mathematics is consequently a part of mathematics curricula. This
means it is of importance to clarify what kind of algorithmic knowledge is neces-
sary for general education. In the light of contemporary discussions around digitiza-
tion, the concept of algorithms turns out to be an important factor in modern
mathematics education. Looking at the curriculum, it is also apparent that algorithmic
thinking is by far not stressed enough.
Within teacher education, especially on the elementary level, it becomes often
apparent that the understanding of scientific theory as a particular formation of how
the world can be looked upon and can be interpreted with a set of particular
mathematics concepts and can be extended. Students often regard mathematics only
as a set of rules to be followed. Therefore, the subject of algorithms should keep the
freedom of search, rather than following a given scheme. According to Freudenthal
(1983), elementary algorithms could be (re-)invented by students. Here, like in
other fields of mathematics classes, it is a question of how much, or how early
within the learning process, such aspects of algorithmic thinking should be a subject.
Recently, bots and similar devices are programmed by pupils in math classes, even
on the primary level (Möller et al., 2022).
Fig. 11.1 Algorithms and

their connections to related
disciplines, illustrated in
the form of a simple
mind map
11.5 Conclusion and Outlook
Moreover, in teacher education, it is of special didactical interest to explore to what

extent teacher students recognize and understand algorithms while doing
mathematics. It is especially important for future teacher to evaluate when algorithms
can be looked upon as “black boxes” and when they should be explored in detail.
The development of this kind of educational judgment is an essential part for
providing general education within math classes. This idea could be put into the
center of further developments of algorithmic thinking activities. Along with
Freudenthal’s “Mathematics as a pedagogical task” (Freudenthal, 1973), one should
also consider the teaching and fostering of algorithmic thinking as a pedagogical task.
The philosophy of mathematics education – and in particular the constructivist
view – should establish a basis for adjusting mathematics instructions appropriately
(Roberge & Seyfert, 2017). With their aspiration about the computational
construction of reality, we observe that a constructivist explanation of these new
phenomena is in the very nature of things.
This may enable advanced students to adopt an adequate epistemological per-
spective. In this context, the modeling aspect is included as a consequence of the
constructivist view on the subjects under (mathematical) investigation (cf. Ernest,
2016). Among other things, this approach facilitates an unconventional access to
Freudenthal’s method of reinvention (Freudenthal, 1983).
References
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Engel, A. (1977). Elementarmathematik vom algorithmischen Standpunkt. Klett.
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Education (pp. 2141–2148). Freudenthal Group & Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University
and ERME. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02421871
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Chapter 12
The Times of Transitions in the Modern
Education
12.1 Introduction
As the confusing times roll through, we reflect more and more about what happened
during the years when the restrictions motivated by pandemic flipped around the
reality for most of us. As an educator and a journal editor, I am tempted to reflect on
transformations in mathematics education based on my own observations and on
professional publications. During the past 2 years, a substantial fraction of article
submissions centered around challenges of successful conversion from in person to
remote education. They were frequently recalling an overwhelming drama of the
first months of the sudden and urgent transitions from in person to remote modality
of instruction. The energy behind the changes was rushed thus resembling
revolutions and remaining in opposition to slow-paced transformations motivated
by professional development.
Revolutionary changes are not exclusive to political or socio-economical human
history but are frequently observed in nature as giant stellar collisions, mass
extinctions of species on Earth, or in the growth of natural sciences as presented in
1962 by Kuhn (2012). Multiple attempts have been made to dispute, modify, or
generalize the original idea of scientific revolutions. In the light of that concept,
Ellis and Berry III (2005) discussed the paradigm shifts in mathematics education
in the USA related to what is meaningful in mathematics and how it should be
tested. This work sees the entire education, and in particular, mathematics education
as a science with certain paradigms that can experience slow modifications motivated
by professional development or revolutionary changes motivated by other factors,
for example, the pandemic. To give a suitable background to the idea of revolutionary
M. Marciniak (*)
LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York Long Island City,
New York, NY, USA
e-mail: mmarciniak@lagcc.cuny.edu
240 M. Marciniak
moments in education, in particular mathematics education, I will analyze three

pivoting situations from history: introduction of compulsory education, secular
education, and public education available to everybody. The shift of the paradigms
which took place in the past, currently shape our presence and future. Then I will
present the current moment and its short-term implications making some mental
simulations of future possibilities.
12.2 Pandemic Articles and Observations
To give a brief overview of sample pandemic-themed articles, I will use examples

from the Mathematics Teaching-Research Journal (MTRJ), since I am an editor and
have insight into the publications. The first pandemic-themed submission arrived as
early as in spring 2020 and analyzed instructor’s creative processes which bloomed
due to the change of circumstances. Marciniak (2020) saw the pandemic as another
opportunity to further develop instructor’s creative thought in the mathematics
classroom. Another creativity paper was published in the fall 2020 issue of MTRJ
and discussed from the perspective of the theoretical framework the moments of
students’ creative insights observed by a mathematics professor Baker et al. (2020)
during remote classes. Another submission from the same issue of the journal
discusses advantages and disadvantages of the remote teaching emphasizing aspects
relevant for students’ success in remote classes (Fuchs & Tsaganea, 2020). Wang
(2021) analyzes benefits and hindrances of the remote mathematics instruction and
goes few steps further in her investigations by collecting data throughout few
semesters. Here the author connects learning outcomes with various aspects of
remote learning environment, in particular students’ class activities.
Assessment and self-reflections are highlighted by Caspari-Sadeghi et al. (2022)
as a key to students’ success in online learning of mathematics. Ariyanti and Santoso
(2020) claim that remote learning of mathematics created lower scores and more
frustration among high school students in Indonesia. But on the other hand, teachers’
digital skills were discovered by Khanal et al. (2021) as the main factor of learning
outcomes and positive experience in mathematics classes in Nepal. Only one
submission discussed truly challenging situations experienced by Indonesian
students and teachers from rural regions. After performing few hundred interviews
by WhatsApp with math teachers, Tanujaya et al. (2021) suggested blended learning
instead of purely remote learning due to insufficient digital infrastructure: poor
Wi-Fi signal and unreliable electronic skills and devices.
The education during pandemic was equally challenging from the perspective of
parents, pupils, and educators with each group facing their own difficulties and
finding their own solutions. In academic publications, the educators express their
progress while the others, parents and pupils remain silent. While speaking with
parents and grandparents about challenges, I heard of difficulties managing their
work time with teenagers and kids being crammed in small spaces with limited
access to technology. During one of committee meetings performed via zoom, I
12 The Times of Transitions in the Modern Education 241
heard a daughter of my colleague complaining that the parent took the computer for
too long preventing her from playing video games. Apparently, the time for work
and play of various family members was confused due to overlapping schedules.
The educators had to manage their classes using a different modality, provide
instructions, assign homework, create quizzes and tests remotely, grade students
work, and then provide feedback. While some converted their courses with minor
difficulties, others had really a hard time managing technology entirely new for
them. The population of teachers split into those who before pandemic knew and
used technology daily and those who had to learn it within a week.
The students reported fatigue due to a large amount of time spent at the desk and
looking at computer screen, insufficient learning skills while tempting video games
and social media being right at their reach. With experience, all three groups learned
to manage their time, attention, and resources while admittedly looking forward for
the end of this enforced new reality.
12.3 Kuhn Theory
Looking through the history, one can see that pivoting moments and sudden changes,
motivated by circumstances or revolutionary mandates, created by the governments
shaped the education more intensely than the slow growth. This idea stays in an
alignment with the theory of Thomas Kuhn of the revolutions in sciences, where the
times of peaceful growth are alternated with times of stormy reorganizations.
In brief, Kuhn’s idea of revolutionary growth of sciences combines slow growth
within certain range of the paradigms together with sudden, pivoting growth that
influences and eventually changes the paradigms. Kuhn calls the times of slow,
regular growth “normal science” and the pivoting moments are for him the
revolutionary times of the “paradigm shifts.”
This alternating nature of the shape of the growth of science reminds of a self-
sharpening mind, which gets ready to sharpen after accumulating new experiences
and then improves itself by reorganizing certain aspects but keeping others.
Similarly, having limited tools of discovery, early science was limited to questions
it could ask but once the horizon expanded the toolbox enlarged, and renewed
science could ask more insightful questions. This renewal is a repetitive event. It
appears that education, and in particular mathematics education, goes through
similar processes of alternating transformations that resemble slow growth and
revolutionary leaps. Slow growth in education is based on discussions and
conversations leading to reforms. The leaps are based on sudden changes which
may result is spectacular effects.
The phases of growth of education can be expressed as follows. Pre-paradigmatic
phase of education took place at the start when no general paradigms are well
established. During those times, education was very much individual and depending
on the capacity of the teachers and the students. This phase was experienced before
education became compulsory. Once education became compulsory, certain
242 M. Marciniak
standards were set by the educators (government or religious institutions) and

education reached the stage of stabilization. When applied to science, this phase
would be called normal science. But when applied to education we could call it
normalized education. Well-functioning paradigms can remain for some time in
science and education, but once a form of crisis appears the paradigms must be
revised. In sciences, crisis usually is a result of deep insight of some scientists who
announce their revolutionary results. But in case of education crisis may be a result
of political or socio-economical transformations which appear to be independent of
the work of teachers and students. However, in fact, they are a result of accumulative
mindset growth of the entire population, accomplished thank to education of the
previous generations. Once the new paradigms are set, the new normalized period
begins. But just like in sciences, the accomplishments in the light of new paradigms
may not be comparable with the previous ones due to incommensurability of the
paradigms. Thinking in terms of science one would not be able to properly compare
the value of work of astronomers who worked in the heliocentric or in the geocentric
theories. Similarly, in case of the times of the pandemic, it is difficult to properly
compare students’ accomplishments before and during the pandemic since the
styles of teaching and testing were so distinctive.
For the purpose of further discussion, a brief description of certain paradigms
which function in (mathematics) education is provided below. Some, such as the
details of the curriculum and the ways of testing, are always timely and generate
heated discussions.
1. Structure and funding of education. Shall it be public or private? Who should
fund schools and furnish teachers’ salaries?
2. Evaluation and accreditation of schools. Which schools are “good” and how it is
measured? How can schools improve?
3. The detailed content of the curriculum: what is taught and how. This paradigm is
particularly important for mathematics education due to challenging nature of
successful teaching and learning math which requires effort from both, the
teachers and the students.
4. Recruitment and evaluation of students. Who is accepted at the schools and
remains there. What knowledge and skills are tested and how. The problem of
accurately testing math skills remains highly disputable due to sensitivity of the
human mind to external disturbances from the environment and internal
disturbances created by anxiety.
5. Selection, training, and evaluation of teachers. How the traits of “good” teachers
can be encouraged by professional development.
6. Assessment of the efficiency and established ways of modifying the points
above. Since every paradigm goes through certain slow transformations, it would
be valuable to verify whether such paradigm is somehow improving. Mathematics
teachers frequently receive negative feedback from students and parents who
express their dissatisfaction related to the difficulties with course material and
low grades. Up to what extent, if any, should the content of math lessons be
dictated by students’ low achievements?
While discussing pivoting moments in the history of education, I will point

toward that paradigms that were in the center of the revolution.
12.4 Pivoting Moments in History
Touching upon few pivoting moments from the history of education help with
understanding the importance of challenging times in the process of shaping modern
education.
12.4.1 Compulsory Education
In a common language, we speak about education being mandatory for all children
within a certain age range. Professional language calls it compulsory education. It
has been a relatively recent accomplishment (since 1739) to introduce compulsory
education for children within certain age range. Three European countries, namely,
Denmark, Prussia, and Austria implemented it already in the eighteenth century and
a long list of others joined in the nineteenth century. Still, a number of countries
worldwide joined in the twentieth century with just few exceptions existing in the
modern times. One of them is the Vatican City, which is the residence of the pope
and apparently does not have to worry about educating young citizens. The
introduction of compulsory education was imposed by the governments partially to
avoid child labor and partially to prepare future citizens to contribute to the
developing industries. In many countries, this change overlapped with the early
growth of industrialism and factories but gaining momentum of its own, motivated
the growth of thought and technology.
The origins and motivations of the early compulsory education in the first coun-
try that introduced it (Denmark) took place in the medieval ages. Early twelfth- and
thirteenth century catholic schools already existed in Denmark, but their motivation
was to prepare the students for theological studies teaching mainly reading and
writing in Latin and Greek. New needs appeared with the spread of Pietistic
Lutheranism which required common people to study the Bible and apply biblical
doctrines for individual piety. Thus, even before introducing compulsory education,
Denmark already developed and tested in practice the concept of educating common
people in its 240 Calvary schools. The growth of philanthropy induced by the
philosophical movement of Enlightenment brought additional funding and allowed
education for all children. After Denmark, other countries began expanding the
concept of educating common people to the concept of educating all people.
At that time in history, mathematics in a form of basic arithmetic was often
taught together with natural sciences. Introducing compulsory education did not
influence the subject but significantly changed the form and quality of mathematics
exposition. Learning got converted from being tuned to the needs of an individual to
244 M. Marciniak
normalized lecturing for nonhomogeneous groups. This destroyed the fine

connection between the teacher and the pupil. Moreover, enlarging the distance
between the teacher and the pupils reduced teacher’s insight into attention and the
process of learning.
It was and still is a duty of a local community to organize a suitable space for the
school and pay for the teacher(s) who provide teaching instructions. In all countries,
before compulsory education was introduced, some education already existed for
the rich or the select few, who received non-standardized schooling from tutors and
governesses. It was the poor children for whom the mandatory education really
made a significant difference. Since compulsory schooling in its early years was
introduced in countries with rural profiles and most poor people lived in villages,
the first school calendars were tightly coordinated with the farmers’ almanac of
planting and harvesting. This way, the summer months were left for harvesting
while the winter months were left for schooling.
Introduction of compulsory education was certainly a revolutionary change for
all three groups, the parents, the pupils, and the teachers. The parents suddenly had
to give their children away to the schooling institutions, exposing educational
insufficiencies of their own family. Lack of intellectual and material resources
together with signs of child abuse and neglect became evident to the entire
community. Imagine overwhelmed and living-in-poverty adults, who did not give
much attention to their children and did not care for their growth, mainly focusing
on making daily living were suddenly called to give their children away, hold
responsible for their behavior, and provide books, clothing, and respect the teachers.
I can only imagine the reaction of free-running children raised mainly outdoors
and used to heavy farm work who suddenly had to obey strict rules of desk-and-
chair schooling days, namely, not used to sitting still for an hour, not used to obey a
stranger, not trained in focusing attention on abstract ideas. And most importantly,
not seeing how these abstract concepts could possibly be useful in their daily life at
a farm, while performing the same tasks as their parents. Even such basic skills as
reading and writing may have been seen as unnecessary and fruitless.
At the same time, the children of the rich had to obey the same rules and partici-
pate in mandatory schooling abandoning the cozy feeling of home schooling. For
most of them, it may have been quite a shock to realize the depth of the poverty of
other children living in the near proximity. While mandatory schooling opened up
the world for the poor, it as well opened up the eyes of the rich children to the
extreme unevenness of the resources bringing confusing feelings or exaltation
mixed with empathy.
The tutors of the rich went through quite a challenging moment shifting from
individual, non-standardized education to group education based on school programs
and uniform curricula. Lack of freedom was probably not the biggest issue for new
instructors but lack of experience managing a group of pupils not used to rigid
discipline. That was probably the motivation of strict discipline rules in the early
classrooms.
Some criticized compulsory education claiming that this style of group learning
does not support individual strengths and violates children’s freedom. Others
claiming that mandatory education is a form of a political game and control over
entire populations. But not everybody knows that the concept of compulsory
education was already presented by Plato in The Republic (c. 424–c. 348 BCE) as
explained by Allen (1989). In Plato’s mind, the perfected society required their per-
fected citizens go through a process of perfection, which had to be accomplished by
popular and mandatory education. This concept was remodeled by Marsilio Ficino,
a Catholic priest and scholar during Renaissance. Similarly, Enlightenment philoso-
pher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was advocating for mandatory education for all.
At those times, it took over 2000 years for an abstract concept of compulsory
education to crystallize and become reality.
One of the arguments of the times of the introduction of the compulsory educa-
tion was that students should be able to read the Bible on their own, which, ironi-
cally, motivated as a counteraction, another pivoting moment in the history of
education, which is a conversion from religious to secular education.
12.4.2 From Religious to Secular Education
This process was much more complicated and very much dependent on the local
region and culture. Moreover, religious education still exists and is doing very well
within many groups and cultures, for example in Jewish communities as in Rosenak
(2011). So, the transformation is not based on disappearance of the religious educa-
tion but on rebalancing the time and efforts from learning religious subjects to learn-
ing in terms separated from religious authorities.
Originally religious education was created by the religious authorities for a vari-
ety of purposes with the main intention of being somehow useful within the reli-
gion-ruled society. Not limited to western world neither enclosed within certain
historical brackets, religious education may have taught rituals, beliefs, or doctrines.
Considering the Medieval Age education as an example, students then studied
reading, writing, and arithmetic together with theology and the art of conversation.
Due to established nature of arithmetic, the conversion to secular education did not
affect teaching of mathematics as much as if affected humanities or natural sciences.
In the times, when sciences were limited to few books and writing skills were
scarce within society, religious education took a significant part in the growth of
individuals. Actually, when the educated people were gathering around religious
centers such as orders and churches, it was assumed that the core of their education
was religious.
Secular education has its roots in broadly understood secularism. To explain the
motivations of the secular education, it is necessary to have a close look at certain
aspects of secularism in politics and the so-called separation of church and state.
Philosophical view of secularism is based on interpreting life as a result of the
material world and not in terms of spiritual or religious aspects. It emphasizes
equality before law and neutrality toward all religions but is not necessarily related
to atheistic or anticlerical views.
246 M. Marciniak
Looking at this philosophical phenomenon chronologically, one needs to men-

tion medieval periods of secularism of Islamic countries dated as early as the tenth
century. The Western world discovered secularism during Enlightenment period and
was very much influenced by the thoughts of John Locke (1689) contained in “A
Letter Concerning Toleration” where he argues that the state should treat all citizens
equally and should not discriminate based on religious beliefs. The idea calls for
politicians to make decisions based on natural reasons withdrawing the religious
motivations. Modern societies have been growing increasingly secular due to
economic development, social progress, and increasingly secular education.
Following political transformations, state-managed schools had to align with the
philosophical trends of secularization creating secular societies.
While secular education is likely to focus on evidence-based science and non-
religious literature, it may still contain lessons about religion or religions. But the
main difference between religious and scientific education is the position of
authority. While religion heavily relies on dogmas, science is based on evidence.
Certainly, authorities play a key role in interpreting the evidence, in validating
theories, and in defining new paradigms of science. But at the very moment when
new evidence arrives, new theories are formulated, the new authorities override the
previous. This allows science to transform and adapt to new circumstances. The
growth of science and the scientific revolutions have been accelerating over last few
centuries, while religions have apparently been not. Hence, separating education
and religion gave the first one acceleration in the direction of the unknown, while
the second one retrieved into the cozy space of the well known.
12.4.3 Public Education Available for Everybody
It is the democracy that determined the broad availability of schooling, and it is the
availability of schooling that motivated the democracy. Thus, the progress of
availability of education was growing together with the civil rights of women and
minorities, as elaborated by Rousseau (1992). At the early stages of development of
education, it was provided mainly to rich white males discriminating everybody
else. Low income, race or ethnicity, gender, or remote geographic location may be
reasons for children not receiving education.
The most popular and well-known theme in availability of public education is the
education of females. Even if education for girls from rich and influential families
was not questioned, somehow the same favors were not extended to girls from other
social groups. It was the growth of emancipation during the Enlightenment era
which brought expanded availability for schooling of girls. At first, these schools
carried a different curriculum than those for boys, but once females began graduating
from established institutions and becoming role models for younger generations,
there was no return to the previous barriers. The changes were slow but consistent
making education more and more inclusive.
Change of this paradigm brought even more students to the mathematics class-
room making it even more nonhomogeneous, thus even more challenging for the
teachers. But at the same time, it opened space for new ideas of contextualization.
Nowadays, in a form of ethnomathematics, we treasure connections of mathematics
with folk art, dance, and music.
But making schooling available to everyone did not mean that everybody could
learn anything whenever they needed or wanted. This became possible just recently
when internet resources became overloaded with broadly available content. With
affordable prices of ample data plans and convenient digital devices, the access to
these vast contents is in hands of everybody.
Now within a reach of a broad scope of users are vast resources for learning and
studying. Any day and anytime one can find how to perform multiplication of
matrices, use chopsticks, or make a silver mirror. These resources are free, easily
searchable, and provide a variety of teaching styles on multiple learning levels for
students of arbitrary background. Numerous people have their channels to share
instructions and explanations of a range of academic topics. One can choose a
teacher of their favorite gender, ethnicity, language, point of view, and other aspects,
which aspects may not appear relevant to the learning process but somehow make
learning more appealing.
The quality of these instructions may sometimes be questionable, but the caliber
of the internet libraries appears quite spectacular. The children of the world have
never had so many English teachers. As a researcher, who clearly does not know
everything, I was trained by my students to “google everything” regardless of
whether I know or do not know much about the topic and always found something
new in the vast internet resources. The growth of internet resources and their
availability has been stably expanding over the last 20 years. The interested parties,
that is, teachers and students seem to be consistently involved in the exchange of
information via internet resources. The teachers gaining millions of viewers of their
education channels seem to earn their pride for having a wide public. And the
students seem to treasure experienced instructors who can get the message across.
Vast availability of digital math lectures of various levels and styles allows stu-
dents to repeatedly listen and read lessons from different teachers. Thus, students
can find favorite styles of exposition suitable for their type of attention.
The truly dangerous aspect of vast internet resources is broad availability of cer-
tain information and instructions dangerous if fell into irresponsible hands. However,
what educators find the most concerning is a non-intellectual style of the content of
social media. At the same time, others claim that relevant information found on
Facebook or Tik-Tok is otherwise unavailable to them.
12.5 The Current Pivoting Moment
For the sake of completeness of the presentation, I am tempted to briefly describe

the current pivoting or revolutionary moment in the development of modern
education. In March 2020, teachers and students worldwide were directed to
248 M. Marciniak
perform schooling remotely. Preparation for such event was highly uneven among
teachers and students with some of them having all digital skills, the software, and
the hardware at hand. While others may lack digital skills on the required level,
appropriate software, sufficiently fast computers, or Wi-Fi connection of a large
capacity. Fortunately to the interested parties, certain aspects of the digital education
were already introduced to the curriculum. Online platforms for homework, quizzes,
tests, and course materials were already popular in certain locations, including web
attendance records and grade rosters.
Based on my close proximity, I would claim that mental preparation for such a
sudden change was entirely lacking among all individuals, maybe excluding those
who went through intense meditation or military training and were able to adopt to
the quickly changing reality without internal resistance. Since at same time, the
entire life of everybody changed, equally students and teachers were struggling with
multiple aspects of their personal and professional lives. This made the entire
experience spectacularly uniform across the globe.
The execution of the traditional curriculum proved to be rather challenging in
multiple aspects. Teachers reported that they simply could not cover the entire
material, could not monitor students’ progress during classes due to lack of cameras
on students’ devices. And the greatest concern was the inability to verify academic
integrity of students’ assignments. Exams and tests that used to be high-stakes
concern became a matter of internet search.
As a result of remote learning, students could access class video lessons from
home and watch them multiple times while remaining in a comfortable environment
of their homes. From the perspective of challenging mathematics topics, this was a
great advantage. But strict testing environment could not be executed anymore,
which caused doubts about the validity of the exams. In mathematics, variability of
possible solutions to basic textbook question is quite limited, making students
solutions quite alike, if not indistinguishable. To rescue the rationale of math testing
in general, test questions required revisions to expose individual differences among
solutions. This could be done by asking for step-by-step explanations with complete
English sentences or by adding a question for discussion.
Since the world was waiting for the pandemic to end quickly with a vaccine and
medications, the teachers and the governments did not assume that the state of
remote instructions will be permanent. Thus, the actions carried out were considered
by all interested parties to be provisional and temporary.
What is spectacular about this moment in comparison to other pivoting moments
in education is that the solutions of the challenges of the pandemic did not follow
previously established paths of progress. There was no extensive preparation of the
teachers, no adjustments of the curriculum, no preparation of the hardware, software,
and no established assessment of the newly developed teaching techniques. During
the first semester of the remote instructions, teachers were not evaluated since there
were no suitable directions from the institutions to perform such a task.
Returning to campus after the pandemic felt even more surrealistic than convert-
ing to remote work. Things were supposed to be back to normal, but they were only
up to certain extent. We, the teachers and the students, were again together in a
classroom but with masks. Some students fell ill and with positive COVID test
results and they were denied access to the college. Accommodating their needs
required truly hybrid modality of the instruction that could accommodate both,
students physically in the room and students remotely on zoom. I began
accommodating students who must (often due to health or quarantine requirements)
attend the class remotely even if the class is scheduled as “in person.” I began giving
lectures with a laptop and a projector instead of a classic “markers on a whiteboard”
lectures. This way students from the classroom could see the writing, hear the
lecture, have access to my One Note writing. Even if I shared with my student class
videos from previous semesters, they appreciated live recordings from our class. I
began a new habit of giving unsupervised daily quizzes since they were available on
Blackboard and all students could access them, including those students who
attended remotely. My classes began a truly hybrid modality, when students were
allowed to attend either in person or remotely. This was due to relaxing the discipline
during the tests, since we spent three semesters adjusting the test questions, so they
become somehow difficult to copy.
After speaking with students about their low-test results, I realized that they sim-
ply forgot how to prepare for proctored exams without access to their notes and
books. We agreed that during the times of transition, it is wise to permit cheat-sheets
or notes at least during some exams to allow more time for adjustments to new
testing styles. This supported my intuition that learning itself is very much influenced
by the style and capacity of testing.
My appreciation of having an immediate insight into the appearance of students’
attention significantly increased due to my awareness that remote teaching strips
entirely that information. During a discussion with students about benefits of
in-person learning, I learned that they do not take class interactions for granted and
sincerely participate in class activities.
At the same time, I see the culture of the entire university changing. In the past,
research meetings were conducted remotely only if the interested parties could not
meet in person due to distance or illness. Now most seminar meetings with
colleagues from the same town take place on zoom only because this modality takes
off the burden of commuting, reserving a room, and we are now all used to it.
College and departmental meetings mostly have both attendance options, in person
and remote. Meeting rooms are now equipped with rotating cameras and wide range
microphones which allow group meetings. Now I wonder whether this trend is
internationally popular.
12.6 Summary
Compared to previous pivoting moments from the history of education, the recent
transition to remote learning had one important feature: it happened to all countries
approximately at the same time and lasted for a similar length, which was not a
matter of days or weeks but months and years. In 2021, remote education happened
250 M. Marciniak
rather suddenly and without sufficient preceding discussions of its features. It is true
that certain aspects of the remote instruction already existed and were on advanced
experimental stages but for most instructors the “in-person” teaching was the default
modality. All previous pivoting moments were analyzed and discussed, carefully
planned, and prepared from the perspective of the students, the teachers, and the
parents. In all cases, the described pivoting moments in education were somehow
imposed on the society by the governments. In some cases, they were in one way or
another, following and motivating the changes of the society.
What significantly distinguishes the remote teaching during the pandemic from
other pivoting moments is the temporality of the modality of learning but with the
underlying thought that up to certain extent some aspects can be used when the
reality returns to normal. The other pivoting moments had a permanent set up with
the underlying thought that the idea will expand. Thus, while introducing compulsory
education the ministry assumed that it will eventually apply not only to white boys
but white girls and later boys and girls of color. Similarly, secularization of education
in terms of the content and the style of thinking had to progress. With the first stage
being simply an introduction of secular subjects to the curriculum, the second stage
being a reduction of the religious subjects, and the third stage removing all religious
mentions from the books and lecture contents. While speaking with my colleagues,
we realized that the growth of popular technology and the speed of Wi-Fi networks
were insufficient just a year or two before the pandemic to accommodate remote
teaching and learning in such capacity. Thus, the pandemic took place just at the
right time for the remote teaching to bloom. Similarly, other pivoting moments of
the history of education happened just at the right time when the society was ready
to accept and accommodate them. This is what in my understanding characterizes
the revolutionary leaps in the process of transformation of education. All the tools
were already existent, and it was the traditional nature of the teachers resisting the
new ideas of remote instruction. At the very moment, when the threats of the virus
are declining, the world seems to embrace the new reality of digital learning
combined with traditional modality of instructions. With numerous names (blended
learning, hybrid courses, synchronous meetings, asynchronous courses) and
varieties, one of a kind the education seems to eventually become individualized to
fit the needs of the individual students.
In my view, education of mathematics will be strongly impacted by the evident
needs for new and improved way of thinking about valid testing methods. On a level
of college instruction, mathematics testing could shift away from being entirely
based on computational skills and convert to project-based evaluation. Since in a
long term, new testing methods influence the way of teaching, this should as well
impact the way mathematics is taught.
At this very moment, while returning to the in-person teaching, I am finding the
digital tools very useful and encouraging. This makes me think that the changes
imposed during the pandemic on students, teachers, and the entire structure of
education will find their places in new designs. Are we heading to the era of truly
hybrid modalities of combined in-person and remote attendances?
References
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secondary_education
Chapter 13
Some Examples of Mathematical
Paradoxes with Implications
for the Professional Development
of Teachers
Yenealem Ayalew
13.1 Introduction
The writing of this chapter was initiated to bring an alternative framework for a col-
laborative professional development of teachers and possible implications for opti-
mal learning. I wanted to see the concept mathematics teacher education differently.
The phrase may be re-considered as education of teacher of mathematics [for stu-
dents]. Thus, there are at least three underlying terms “mathematics,” “teacher,” and
education.” Of course, the idea is that it would be possible by educator or trainer and
ultimately for students, the end users. An interplay of the three thoughts is this:
mathematics as the subject, teacher as the agent, and education as the program.
Implicitly, the thought “mathematics teacher education” encloses two more notions:
educator and student.
Then, the preparation, professional development, teaching, or empowerment of
teacher educators would have impact. Which order gives more sound – mathematics-
teacher-education or education-teacher-mathematics? It can be the basis of the
discussion and shortly illustrated as follows (Fig. 13.1).
We have seen mathematics teacher education as the education [by a trainer] of
teacher of mathematics [for students]. The overall mapping is attributed to the
philosophy of education that assumes “creative imagination” as a vital component
(Degu, 2020). Again, if we regard “creative imagination” of an educator as the key
concept, then, the introduction would turn to sensitizing the concept; and thus,
the approach would be the other way round. In this regard, the following picture
might illustrate it better (Fig. 13.2).
Y. Ayalew (*)
Kotebe University of Education, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
254 Y. Ayalew
Teacher
Ed
ics uc
at at
m ion
the
a
M
Fig. 13.1 Emphasizing on the mathematics-teacher-education so that the ultimate goal of profes-
sional development would be envisioned
Trainining of
Creative
Mathematics Students
Imagination
Teachers
Fig. 13.2 The process of using “Creative Imagination” in teacher’s professional development
Since, the end users of a teacher education program are students in schools, in
order to benefit them with the best of service, seeking a creative imagination would
be relevant (Degu, 2020). In this chapter, I advocate a sociocultural approach to
creative imagination and mathematical paradoxes. Yet, the former would be included
in the latter concept.
13.2 The Essence of Mathematics
The term mathematics is very common; yet, it may be hard to forward full elucida-
tion. I consider some definitions from known dictionaries. The Oxford English
Dictionary offline application defines mathematics as “a science (group of related
sciences) dealing with the logic of quantity, shape, and arrangement.” The Collins
English Dictionary and Thesaurus defines it as “a group of related sciences, includ-
ing algebra, geometry, and calculus, concerned with the study of number, quantity,
shape, and space and their interrelationships by using a specialized notation.” The
Merriam-Webster 6.5 dictionary considers the subject as “the science of numbers
and their operations, interrelations, combinations, generalizations, and abstractions
and of space configurations and their structure, measurement, transformations, and
generalizations.” So, the term number and quantification are being referred com-
monly to represent the concept of Mathematics. In a sense, it may be regarded as a
science of computation and operation.
On the other hand, mathematics may be taught as provision of skills to learn and
create shared meanings by way of socializing the field. It is because of the fact
that it is an integral part of our society in one or another way (König, 2016) as it
possesses a central importance in our society. It shapes and influences many areas
13 Some Examples of Mathematical Paradoxes with Implications for the Professional… 255
of our daily life. The field has been shaping the world in which we live; the world in
turn shapes the discipline of mathematics (Greenwald & Thomley, 2012). Therefore,
Mathematics is a human activity, a social phenomenon, part of human culture, and
intelligible in a social context (Ernest, 1991). This is because as the societal prob-
lems evolve, new mathematical solutions would be created. Thus, a mathematical
knowledge is socially and culturally situated (Clarke et al., 2015). In short, it is a
cultural phenomenon; it is a set of ideas, connections, and relationships that we can
use to make sense of the world (Boaler, 2016). Then, mathematical expressions can
be and often are interpreted when applying mathematics in the real world (Baber,
2011). In such an interpretive paradigm, the basic principle is meaning making;
interpretations are embedded in and dependent on language.
In this early twenty-first century, applied mathematicians seem to be far from
exhausting the potential of mathematics to change and advance society (Greenwald
& Thomley, 2012). So far, many developments in mathematics that raised
philosophic questions are at times discussed in public (König, 2016) and found
relevant for the proper schooling. Yet, there could be more mathematical discoveries
or inventions that would serve for societal developments.
In this chapter, I look at mathematics through the lens of larger societal structures
such as nations, cultures, and educational systems. In other ways, I tempt to explore
the societal structures within mathematics, such as notions of proof, certainty, and
success (Greenwald & Thomley, 2012). In turn, this goes to the issue of subjectivity
in mathematics education which had been initiated by a number of scholars (Brown,
2001, 2011; Lerman, 2018; Williams, 1993). The inspiring point is that Brown and
Lerman mentioned the use of multitude of filters in the didactics of mathematics. In
this regard, teachers, students, researchers, and the subject mathematics are main
driving forces in the didactics of mathematics and discourse. It is clear that meanings
are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation (Corbin &
Strauss, 2008). Accordingly, multiple meanings could be created for the same
object. For instance, scholars’ conceptions of Euclid’s fifth postulate have created
disagreement among geometers and, as a result, Euclidean, Absolute, Elliptical, and
Hyperbolic geometries were discovered.
Mathematical meaning is produced in discourse (Brown, 2001). Since, thinking
mathematically is about interpreting situations (Lesh & Doerr, 2003), a mathematics
education researcher is likely advocating the interpretive paradigm. However,
mathematical representations are considered to be mathematically conventional, or
standard, when they are based on assumptions and conventions shared by wider
mathematical community. In a sense, it would be difficult to testify the truth-values
of such assertions. How then do we relate to [the conventional] mathematics (Brown,
2011)? Of course, it is possible to do so. For instance, in Calculus teaching and
learning, interpreting and characterizing the behavior and structure of solution
functions are important goals. The rigorous study of initial-value problems would
imply the effect of varying parameters on the solution space. The aforementioned
three mathematical expressions are attempts of mathematization as social process.
Similarly, mathematization provides another challenge for mathematics education
as it becomes important to develop a critical position to mathematical rationality as
well as new approaches to the construction of meaning.
256 Y. Ayalew
Therefore, mathematics is about explorations, conjectures, and interpretations

(Boaler, 2016); hence meaning making (Prediger, 2007) has great potential in
bringing a perspective. Mathematical expressions can be and often are interpreted
when applying mathematics in the real world (Baber, 2011). Social studies develop
hermeneutically; its activity is inherently interpretive (Lerman, 2018). In the
interpretive paradigm, the basic principle is meaning making; interpretations are
embedded in and dependent on language.
13.3 Mathematical Paradoxes
Currently, mathematics education research is mostly concerned with two questions

(Ernest, 2020):
• What is mathematical truth and how do we justify and explain it, and above all,
how do we come to know it?
• How can we best and most effectively teach and facilitate the learning of
mathematics?
These questions could be treated based on our understanding of the essence of
mathematics. There is an argument that assumes mathematical knowledge as a
humanly constructed (Ernest, 1991). That may enable us to see mathematics as
multiple realities, relative truths, complexities, and ambiguities (Degu, 2020).
However, such a freedom may lead to the existence of paradoxes. The paradoxes are
deductive arguments that end in contradictions (Clark, 2012; Weber, 2021). We may
think of sorts of a paradox. The most fascinating one is that it reveals a genuine
problem in our understanding of its subject matter (Clark, 2012; Rayo, 2019), on the
other hand, a boring paradox that leads nowhere due to a superficial mistake and is
no more than a nuisance (Rayo, 2019). In this regard, Clark (2012) regarded any
puzzle which has been called a “paradox,” even if on examination it turns out not to
be genuinely paradoxical. The most interesting paradoxes of all are those that reveal
a problem interesting enough to lead to the development of an improved theory.
Euclid’s fifth postulate was originally stated as:
That if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side
less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side
on which are the angles less than two right angles. (Merzbach & Boyer, 2011)
The idea could be illustrated as follows (Fig. 13.3).

The postulate states that if the lines 𝑙1 and 𝑙2 are extended without limit, they
would meet at point. The postulate would result in a triangle. In other words, without
loose of generality, three interior angles (of a triangle) would be created (Fig. 13.4).
Yet, the most familiar one is a re-statement and an interpretation of Euclid’s fifth
postulate by William Playfair’s (1759–1823): “through a given point outside a given
line, exactly one line may be constructed parallel to the given line” (Katz, 2009). It
can be illustrated as follows (Fig. 13.5).
Fig. 13.3 Understanding

Euclid’s fifth postulate
l2
l1
Fig. 13.4 Euclid’s fifth B

postulate: a triangle
Fig. 13.5 An interpretation of Euclid’s fifth postulate
The leading question is then: how many lines do really pass through a given
point outside a given line and parallel to the given line be constructed? One? Two?
Many? Infinite? What does “infinite” itself mean? As I noted earlier, the conceptions
258 Y. Ayalew
of the fifth postulate continued to create disagreement among geometers. That is

why Euclidean Geometry, Elliptical Geometry, and Hyperbolic geometry were
discovered. On the other hand, Absolute (Neutral) Geometry takes no position or
stand on parallelism. Based on such disparities, for instance, the sum of the interior
angles of a triangle is either 180°, less than 180° or greater than 180°. Since angles
are quantified in numbers, the sum of numbers is a big deal. Thus, the main essences
of mathematics, quantification and computation, are being questioned. In this
regard, more examples are presented in the following sections.
13.4 Taking One Plus One as an Example
It is time for a renewal of the study of the politics of numbers (Mennicken & Salais,
2022). My intention here is to extend the meaning making for 1 + 1 by digging in to
views of mathematics.
One Plus One in Group Theory
In the set of integers ℤ with a binary operation the usual addition, 1 + 1 is in ℤ. In
this regard, 1 + 1 = 2.
Yet, 0 is the identity element and every element is invertible, for instance,
1 + (−1) = 0. It follows that, 1 + 1 = (1 + 1) + 0 = 1 + 1 + (−1 + 1).
Again, (1 + 1) = (1 + 1) + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + ⋯.
Hence, I have 1 + 1 = 1 + 1 + (−1 + 1) + (−1 + 1) + (−1 + 1) + ⋯.
By the associative property of the group,
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 
1 0 0 0 
1
Thus, 1 + 1 is not necessarily 2; it could be 1. We have 1 + 1 = 1.

However, if the group is (ℤ2, +) whereby ℤ2 = {0,1}; we get 1 + 1 = 0 (𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑙𝑜 2).
In short, we may write 1 + 1 = 0.
One Plus One in Number Theory
Most of the time, we use base 10 numeral system. However, a binary (base 2) rep-
resentation using the digits 1 and 0 is essential in computer science. In a sense,
information is expressed in terms of 00, 01, 10, and 11. Here, I capture 1 + 1 as
(10)2. In short, 1 + 1 = 10. That is a different perspective. Yet, 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑙𝑜 2 and 𝑏𝑎𝑠𝑒 2
convey the same message; in both cases, 1 + 1 = 0. Thus, 1 + 1 becomes 10.
One Plus One in Logic
Paradoxes in (mathematical) logic have forced logicians to modify existing theories
to rid themselves of troubling inconsistencies (Farlow, 2014). The trouble may
happen when the judgment is subjective in its nature. For instance, the knower
[paradox] can mention (Clark, 2012):
If K is true it is false, because I know it; so, it is false. But, since I know that, I know it is
false, which means it is true. So, it is both true and false.
In the example, there are more than two sentences. Since, the conclusion given is
“true and false,” it is difficult to consider it as a mathematical statement (proposition)
where by a sentence is either true or false, but not both.
Instead of “true,” we may choose “T” in short form. Similarly, instead of “false,”
we may take “F” as a short form. Besides, we may associate values 1 and 0,
respectively, for “true” and “false.” Then, the dichotomy of true/false can be
expressed as follows in a characteristic function.
1if x A
: A 0,1 such that x
0 if x A
The truth-value table of combination of statements denoted by 𝑝 and 𝑞 can be put

as follows.
The information in Fig. 13.6 is given by either FF, FT, TF, TT or 00, 01, 10, 11.
The operation “+” could be assumed by the logical conjunction “and”. In this case,
False and False is False. That is: 0 + 0 = 0
False and True is False; 0 + 1 = 0.
True and False is False;1 + 0 = 0.
True and True is True; 1 + 1 = 1.
Since “true and true” is logically true, we have: 1 + 1 = 1.
One Plus One in Geometry
One of the ancient geometers, Archimedes, had approximate evaluation of the ratio
of the circumference to diameter for a circle (Merzbach & Boyer, 2011). If we think
of a circle with minimized radius so that its area is 1 units-square and a hexagon
each with one units-square, the combined area would be then represented by 1 + 1.
On the other hand, the union of the areas would be the circular region. Hence,
1 + 1 = 1.
Fig. 13.6 Different scenarios of “true” and “false” with their corresponding representations
using 0 and 1
260 Y. Ayalew
One Plus One in Sequence and Series

I have considered the geometric series:
2 3 4
1 1 1 1
1
2 2 2 2
1
Since 1 + a + a2 + a3 + … for |a| < 1 converges to , the geometric series
becomes 2. 2 3 4
1− a
1 1 1 1
The limit value of as 𝑛 goes on indefinitely is 1
(Rayo, 2019). 2 2 2 2
By taking out the common factor, I get:
1 1 1 1 1

2 3 4
1
2 2 2 2 2
1
The expression in the bracket is equivalent to:
1
1−
2.

1 1
This leads to the equation: 1
2 1
1
2
2 3 4
Therefore 1 1 1 2 . That would result in
1 1 1 1
2 2 2
the sum 2. 2
1
Once again,
2 3 4
1 1 1 1
11 1
2 2 2 2
I take the common factor in
2 3 4
1 1 1 1
1
2 2 2 2
1 1 1 1 1

2 3 4
1 1
2 2 2 2 2
1 1 1 1 1 1

2 3 4
1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 3 4
1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 3 4
1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

n n
1 1 1 1 3
1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2
n
3
Therefore, computing the limit value of the geometric series, lim , we have:
n 2

n
3
1 1 1 lim 1
n 2

We get two conclusions: 1 + 1 = 2; 1 + 1 = ∞. What an illusion! Many of the

most fascinating paradoxes involve infinity (Clark, 2012).
One Plus One in Applied Mathematics
In molecular biology, there is a term “Endosymbiosis” as a form of symbiosis in
which two cells live together in nature, one inside the other (Archibald, 2014).
Then, Endosymbiosis acts to bring evolutionarily distinct lineages together in a
manner that can lead to the generation of entirely new organisms. That is, one plus
one equals one.
So far, we saw how “One Plus One” varies in different scenarios including
Applied Mathematics, Group Theory, Number Theory, Logic, Geometry, Sequence
and Series. The results were 0, 1, 2, 3, 10, or ∞. The summary is given below.
0 modulo 2
1 as it happensin logic and Endosymbiosis
11
2 as it happeens in the usual addition
3 in the case of synergy or collaborative work
10 in base 2 or simply 10 2
when infinite geometric series is considered
262 Y. Ayalew
Yet, there might be more alternatives too. The more varied the input, the more
unexpected the combinations, the more creative the ideas. If new ideas come with
new combinations of existing ideas, the more connections we can create, the more
ideas we can generate (Trott, 2015). However, the claim needs to have some
underpinning reason (Ernest, 2016). So, what makes us to believe in the truth of
1 + 1 = 2? The above scenarios have shown us the need to acknowledging plurality
or subjective truths.
13.5 Associated Meanings in Mathematics Education
From the examples of paradoxes reported in this chapter, we can look for some
implications in mathematics education. How is a meaning given to a mathematical
conception? Or, what are the criterions to consider it as mathematical idea? The
answer may be as follows: mathematical relationships are reasoned with subjective
meanings and arguments. Then, the art would be the selection of a level of
representation which is appropriate for a given task, both in terms of the information
available and in terms of the reasoning required (Forbus, 2008). The formulae can
be generated while lots of opinions are gathered. Generally, such qualitative values
could be inculcated while mathematics education is associated with the daily life
students.
The question of meaning with respect to mathematics education, the issue
becomes more complex (Kilpatrick et al., 2005). On the one hand, we may claim
that an activity has meaning as part of the curriculum, while students might feel that
the same activity is totally devoid of meaning. For instance, what is meant by
infinity? Mathematics education treats the term infinite not as a real number, but as
the quality of being unlimited in size (Wapner, 2005). That suggests seeking
abundance in our activities. It also gives place for qualitative value than quantification.
Then, a change in teaching takes time, imagination, courage, and honest reflection
on what works and what does not. So, a mathematics teacher or educator is expected
to see the essence of the subject differently. In turn, that would determine the how
of teaching and learning processes.
Above all, the key question to be posed is as follows: is it possible to bring quali-
tative mathematical relations in to classroom context? The science of learning and
teaching mathematics can propose value judgments and normative prescriptions
that can inform teachers of mathematics on the provision of study processes, and
teachers will take up, or not, those judgments and prescriptions and interpret and
apply them as they see fit (Lerman, 2018).
In this twenty-first century, applied mathematicians are far from exhausting the
potential of mathematics to change and advance society (Greenwald & Thomley,
2012) Some developments in mathematics raised philosophic questions. There is a
controversy concerning the certainty of mathematical knowledge and what it means
(Ernest, 2016). Education is becoming more available, to members of society, in
more places, and more ways than ever in human history (Naidoo, 2021) Yet, higher
education is currently designed to meet the needs of old time (Gleason, 2018).
Lead Supervisor
(Consultant)
Instructor at Teacher
Education program
Prospective
Teachers
Student in
the School
Fig. 13.7 Multi-level collaboration in the professional development of mathematics teachers
On the other hand, we are expected to plan and work for tomorrow. Yet, the
future is uncertain; we do not know what will happen to the practice of education.
Both teachers and students are required to possess critical skills to achieve success
within the educational environment (Naidoo, 2021). Then, if we have a sense of the
drivers that will influence society, schooling, and teacher education, we can begin to
imagine possibilities for teacher education futures (Schuck et al., 2018). I think, the
main movers and shakers in the education system are teachers and teacher educa-
tors. So, their creative imaginations would have greater impacts on the end users.
13.6 Professional Competencies of Mathematics Teachers
Since the teacher is a key stakeholder in the student’s learning process, his/her capa-
bility shall be of a concern. Then, the teacher training program and competencies of
teacher educators would be relevant to address. The following areas of standards
(Ayalew, 2017) were framed for a mathematics teacher educator in Ethiopian
context.
• Personality and Professional Ethics
• Language and Communication
• School Mathematics Education
• Guidance and Support
• Assessment and Feedback
• Partnership and Collaboration
• Professional Development
• Teacher Education
It was assumed by then that the standards could be used for determining courses
to educators of mathematics teachers and evaluation of performance. Since the
mathematics teacher educators are not from the same field of specialization, it is
difficult to write down the detailed certification criterions. Yet, it is possible to point
264 Y. Ayalew
out the standards with regard to teaching and toward mathematics teacher educa-
tion. In short, what is expected of mathematics teacher educators in this era? How
could they work and learn together? The underling analysis goes to consider an
investigation and a formulation of the creative imagination of educators. For
instance, groups of mathematics teachers may be engaged in lesson studies.
So, managing such a collaboration may demand addressing interdisciplinary per-
spectives some of which are mathematics educator’s point of view, philosophy, the
science of learning, teacher education, and classroom observation. Accordingly, it
demands the collaboration and involvement of faculty members. To enable prospec-
tive mathematics teachers to make stronger connections with the profession, an edu-
cator worked collaboratively with a practicing teacher by co-teaching one cohort of
pre-service teachers studying primary mathematics education (Downton et al.,
2018). Hence, an ideal collaborative work model could enable us to justify such
assumptions (Fig. 13.7).
This hierarchy is based on an inspiration from the Ethiopian “traditional”
(Orthodox Church) education peer-teaching and multi-stage teaching approaches.
By this hierarchy, I assume that the supervisor (senior researcher in mathematics
teacher education), research fellows (post-doctoral, doctoral or Master’s degree
candidates), practicing teachers (in-service mathematics teachers, action researchers,
or teachers engaged in continuous professional development activities), and students
are community of practice.
Here, in this era, an imagination is needed to construct activities, build a system,
and anticipate conversations and actions that will bring learners’ inquiry to
fulfilment, enabling growth toward desirable skills and understandings. However,
the selection of participating educators and teachers would be determined by the
kind recommendation to the supervisor. In order to run such a scheme properly,
communication and progress reports might to be performed regularly. Students
would need to be exposed to and be stimulated in learning through technology-
enabled pedagogy and technology-based tools to enhance the development of
technology within educational environments. Teachers would also need to be
proficient in using technology-enabled pedagogy and technology-based tools
(Naidoo, 2021). They need to be professionally developed in acquiring skills of
critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy,
media literacy, technology literacy, and flexibility. Thus, a multi-level collaborative
framework would shape personal understandings of those who aspire to become
mathematics teacher educators.
In this regard, concepts including imaginative leadership, facilitation, construc-
tion, and co-construction of knowledge might be worth to consider. This is because
mathematics teacher educator’s roles, competencies, and challenges are composite
functions of practicing teachers’ experience and students’ expectation (Ayalew,
2017). Thus, senior researchers are expected not study on teachers but to work with
them (Superfine, 2019). I argue that seeking creative imaginers would be vital to
push the teaching profession in to a higher level. This view might be linked to
“Futures Research” which seeks to provide insights that might help to change the
present and direct the future (Schuck et al., 2018). In other words, the purpose is to
systematically explore, create, and test both possible and desirable futures to
improve decisions. There are numerous futures research methods used to gain
understandings of possibilities in teacher education (Schuck et al., 2018); some of
which are horizon scanning, driver analysis, Delphi panels, scenario production,
and back casting.
13.7 Conclusions
The lines of thoughts communicated in this chapter may be labeled into two: math-
ematical paradox of infinity and social meaning of mathematics. “It is time for a
renewal of the study of the politics of numbers” (Mennicken & Salais, 2022). In a
sense, such an insight of multi-varied nature of heading to numbers in different
situations is the present-day matter. This chapter has elaborated the sum of one and
one. The discussion relies on an eclectic position of the different philosophies of
mathematics. For instance, the mathematical statements “1 + 1 = 2” is wrong for
Fictionalism because there are no such objects. On the other hand, the conclusion
“1 + 1 > 2” is wrong in Absolutist view. Since a paradox is an argument that appears
to be valid and impossible for valid reasoning to take us from true premises to a
false conclusion (Rayo, 2019), it is a sure sign for at least one of the following
mistakes: our premises are not really true; our conclusion is not really false; or our
reasoning is not really valid. Therefore, a mathematical truth may not be taken for
granted in the classroom instruction. Hence, there are multiple truths in mathematics.
On the other hand, a habit of working together and self-study would afresh the
existing practice in the teaching and learning process. Besides, there is a need
of “transformation” of a community of practice into a community of inquiry
(Goodchild, 2014); it can be a great concern.
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Part III
Philosophy of Critical Mathematics
Education, Modelling and Education
for Sustainable
Chapter 14
A Performative Interpretation
of Mathematics
Ole Skovsmose
14.1 Introduction
In the way it was traditionally developed, the philosophy of mathematics appears

two dimensional by concentrating on ontological and epistemological issues. I cer-
tainly consider such issues important, but I want to highlight the need of developing
a four-dimensional philosophy of mathematics by adding a sociological and an ethi-
cal dimension. Such a philosophy has been presented in Connecting Humans to
Equations: A Reinterpretation of the Philosophy of Mathematics (Ravn &
Skovsmose, 2019). However, Ole Ravn and I do not claim that a philosophy of
mathematics only contains four dimensions. One could, for instance, consider the
relevance of an aesthetic dimension.
The ontological dimension addresses the nature of mathematical objects by
focussing on questions like the following: What is a number? What is a point? What
is a function? The epistemological dimension addresses the nature of mathematical
knowledge by concentrating on questions like the following: How do we come to
know about abstract mathematical objects? What is the nature of mathematical
deduction? Is mathematical knowledge absolute? The sociological dimension
addresses the social formation of mathematical knowledge by raising questions like
the following: Are mathematical truths time-dependent? Do metaphysical or reli-
gious convictions have an impact on mathematical theorising? Does technological
O. Skovsmose (*)
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), Rio Claro, Brazil
e-mail: osk@ikl.aau.dk
270 O. Skovsmose
development form mathematical research approaches?1 The ethical dimension con-

siders the mathematical formation of the social by asking questions like the follow-
ing: What is the impact of bringing mathematics into action? Could such an impact
be problematic, if not disastrous? How might mathematics, brought into action,
form our life-worlds?
The notion of life-world was introduced in 1936 by Edmund Husserl (1970)
when he published the original German version of The Crisis of European Sciences
and Transcendental Phenomenology. The notion has been further explored by phe-
nomenology and by social theorising inspired by the phenomenological outlook.
Husserl presents the life-world as an original experienced world, not structured by
scientific or any other kinds of systematic knowledge. In The Structures of the Life-
World, Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann (1973) point out that a life-world is to
be understood as “that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult
simply takes for granted in the attitude of common sense” (p. 3). However, my use
of the notion of life-world is different from the one inspired by phenomenology. I
see a life-world as a complexity of socially structured living conditions. It can be
structured by economic, political, religious, ideological, cultural, and discursive
factors. For a clarification of my interpretation of life-world, see my book
Foregrounds: Opaque Stories About Learning (Skovsmose, 2014b).
In this chapter, I suggest a performative interpretation of mathematics, which
will establish the ethical dimension as being crucial to a philosophy of mathematics.
In different ways – and by means of different terminologies – I have indicated a
performative interpretation of mathematics. In Skovsmose (1994), I talk about the
“formatting power of mathematics”. Later, I talk about “mathematics in action” and
explore different features of such actions. In Ravn and Skovsmose (2019), we anal-
ysed forms of “mathematics-based fabrications”.2 A performative interpretation
contrasts a descriptive interpretation of mathematics, which highlights that mathe-
matics is a unique tool for describing natural phenomena: by means of mathematics,
one can capture the laws of nature. With respect to technological or architectural
constructions, mathematics has also been considered a crucial descriptive tool. For
instance, descriptive geometry addresses how to make two-dimensional presenta-
tions of three-dimensional objects and, in this way, how to provide blueprints of any
kind of construction. According to a descriptive interpretation, mathematics can be
considered as the language of both science and technology. In contrast, a performa-
tive interpretation of mathematics highlights that, by means of mathematics, one
performs interventions on reality. Mathematics is not only a means for description,
but also a means for action. Mathematics brought into action might generate a range
of diverse implications, which require ethical reflections.
1
An important initial step in beginning to explore the sociological dimension of a philosophy of
mathematics was taken by Wittgenstein (1978, 1989). More steps were taken by Restivo (1992);
Restivo et al. (1993); and Ernest (1998).
2
For a careful presentation of metamathematics performativities, see also Yasukawa et al. (2012,
2016) and Part 4 “Mathematics and Power” in Skovsmose (2014a, pp. 199–280).
14 A Performative Interpretation of Mathematics 271
In the following, I start outlining three well-established positions in the philoso-

phy of mathematics, namely, logicism, formalism, and intuitionism. All of these
positions are fully concentrated on ensuring mathematics is imbued with certainty
by focussing on ontological and epistemological questions. In order to move beyond
this two-dimensional thinking, I present a performative interpretation of language,
which for me serves as an inspiration for suggesting a performative interpretation of
mathematics. This interpretation I outline with respect to both advanced mathemat-
ics and school mathematics. This brings me to recognise that mathematics brings
about a pervasive formation of our life-worlds. As a result, the ethical dimension of
a philosophy of mathematics becomes crucial.
14.2 The Three Magi: Merry Mathematics!
The three classic positions in the philosophy of mathematics – logicism, formalism,

and intuitionism – are paradigmatic examples of two-dimensional thinking.
“Philosophy of mathematical practice” is a recent trend that critically reacts to the
three classic positions, although it does not move far beyond two-dimensional anal-
yses. Neither logicism, formalism, intuitionism, nor the philosophy of mathematical
practice has engaged in any performative interpretation of mathematics, and conse-
quently these positions were all oblivious to ethical issues. Against this backdrop, I
find it relevant to present a performative interpretation of mathematics that will
bring the philosophy of mathematics out of its self-created ethical vacuum.
The logicist programme was launched in three steps by Gottlob Frege. First, he
wanted to make sure that mathematical deductions had the genuine logical format,
and in the Begriffsschrift, first published in German in 1879, Frege (1967) indicated
how logic itself could be organised as an axiomatic system. The German word
Begriff means “concept” and Schrift means” writing”, so literally speaking
Begriffsschrift means “concept writing”. Frege claimed that all valid forms of
deduction would appear as theorems in this system. Next, in Die Grundlagen der
Arithmetics, published in German in 1884, Frege (1978) showed how the notion of
number could be defined by means of logical notions. Finally, in Grundgesetze der
Arithmetik I-II, Frege (1893, 1903) showed in detail how mathematics could be
presented as a deductive system based upon a foundation of logic.
By organising logic as an axiomatic system, showing how basic mathematical
notions could be defined by logical notions, and how mathematical theorems could
be derived from logical theorems, Frege outlined the whole logicist programme.
Logicism confronted psychologism, which interprets mathematical knowledge as
being derived from empirical observations. In A System of Logic, published in 1843,
John Stuart Mill (1970) formulated the psychologist position, and in The Nature of
Mathematical Knowledge, Philip Kitcher (1983) revived this position. In Principia
Mathematica, published in three volumes, Alfred Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
(1910-1913) reworked all the technical details of the three-step programme pre-
sented by Frege. A difficulty for finalising the logicist programme in a satisfactory
272 O. Skovsmose
way emerged in terms of set-theoretical paradoxes. In Principia Mathematica, such

paradoxes were prevented by means of a theory of types. This was, however, a
deviation from the genuine logicist programme, as the theory of types is not a pure
logical theory, but rather a heuristic device. Principia Mathematica is the most
ambitious attempt to present mathematics as an ahistorical logical structure,
assumed in order to ensure mathematics was imbued with eternal certainty.
Like logicism, formalism also tried to infuse mathematical knowledge with cer-
tainty. This concern was provoked by the appearance of paradoxes within what were
thought to be solid mathematical structures. A point of departure for the formalist
programme was to recognise problems with respect to the axiomatisation of geom-
etry as presented in Euclid’s Elements. It appeared that Euclid had used more than
the five explicitly stated axioms for proving the theorems. In addition, he had used
some intuitive conceptions of the properties of lines, planes, and space. In
Grundlagen der Geometrie, published in 1899, David Hilbert (1968) presented a
revised axiomatic system, containing in total twenty axioms. By doing so, he made
the implicit axioms used by Euclid explicit. In this way, Hilbert wanted to eliminate
the leftovers of intuition accompanying mathematical deductions. Intuition was
under suspicion, allowing paradoxes to emerge in mathematical theory building.
In order to eliminate intuition from mathematical theory building in general, and
not only from geometry, Hilbert launched the metamathematical approach.3
According to this approach, mathematical theories should be properly axiomatised,
as Hilbert himself had done with respect to Euclidian geometry. Then, the axioma-
tised theories should be represented as formal systems written in a symbolic lan-
guage of the same type as the one presented in Principia Mathematica. The formal
representations of mathematical theories should be analysed, in particular with
respect to consistency and completeness. With respect to consistency, the ambition
was to demonstrate that it was not possible to prove a theorem T as well as ¬T. With
respect to completeness, the ambition was to demonstrate that for any possible for-
mula T, it was possible to prove either T or ¬T. By constructing such metamathe-
matical arguments, it was Hilbert’s ambition to vaccinate mathematical theories
against possible paradoxes.
However, in 1936 Kurt Gödel (1962) showed that Hilbert’s ambition was illusory
by demonstrating that, in the case where a mathematical theory has a certain degree
of complexity – so complex that it contains the theory of numbers – then if it was
consistent, it would be incomplete. In other words, a consistent theory would always
contain a formula T, where neither T nor ¬T could be proven. Nevertheless, embed-
ded in Hilbert’s metamathematical programme, formalism emerged as a general
philosophy of mathematics by claiming that the formal representations of mathe-
matical theories are the real mathematical theories. Genuine mathematics is cap-
tured by formal languages, while other forms of expressing mathematics are
preliminary and only serve as approximations to mathematics.4
3
For a careful presentation for metamathematics, see Kleene (1971).
4
For a concise presentation of a formalist philosophy of mathematics, see Curry (1970)
By publishing the article “Intuitionism and Formalism” in 1913, L.E J. Brouwer

launched the intuitionist programme. He was also concerned about the emergence
of paradoxes within mathematics but suggested quite a different route out of the
foundational crisis than Hilbert. Brouwer found that the paradoxes had emerged
because invalid forms of logical deduction had been applied in mathematics.
Brouwer, however, was not embracing any logicist programmes, as he found that
the logical system as presented in both the Begriffsschrift and Principia Mathematica
had incorporated invalid logical principles.
Brouwer did not see the need to eliminate intuition from mathematics but argued
that a proper format of mathematical intuition had to be established. For instance,
Brouwer did not consider indirect proof to have general validity. The approach of
making an indirect proof of a theorem T is to assume non-T and to demonstrate that
this assumption leads to a contradiction. On this basis, one claims to have proven
T. However, according to Brouwer this is not a valid mathematical argument, as
mathematical insight must be based on constructive processes. This means that one
could be in the situation where neither T nor non-T has been proven. As a conse-
quence, Brouwer claimed that the logical principle p ∨ ¬p is not valid in general
with respect to mathematics. When any such invalid arguments are eliminated from
mathematics, the paradoxes will evaporate. In “Intuitionism and Formalism”,
Brouwer argued that this would be the case by showing how different recognised
paradoxes would disappear when assuming an intuitionist approach to mathematics.
Brouwer positioned intuition in the centre of mathematical theory building by
claiming that mathematics emerges through mental constructions. According to
intuitionism, such constructions constitute the real mathematics. Quite contrary to
formalism, Brouwer considered formalised systems as being imprecise and at times
as mischievous representations of genuine mathematics. To think of formalism as
being the mathematics would be similar to thinking of a sheet music as being the
music. Brouwer did not associate intuition with any degree of uncertainty. To him,
a proper use of intuition was the best way of securing certainty in mathematics.
Already in 1905 in Life, Art, and Mysticism, he emphasised this conviction to the
claim that “truth is always the same to those who understand” (Brouwer, 1996,
p. 404). In his Cambridge Lectures on Intuitionism, Brouwer (1996) gave a revised
presentation of intuitionism. In Intuitionism: An Introduction, Arend Heyting (1971)
gives a captivating introduction to the whole programme.
Different as they are, logicism, formalism, and intuitionism have all struggled to
establish mathematics with certainty. The three of them have provided paradigmatic
illustrations of what a two-dimensional philosophy of mathematics could look like.5
These Three Kings, the Magi, worshipped mathematics as being a sublime science,
whose eternal qualities could be grasped by concentrating on the intrinsic properties
of mathematics.
5
A two-dimension philosophy of mathematics has been elaborated further on, both in terms of
detailed analyses and in terms of comprehensive presentations. See, for instance, Bernacerraf and
Putnam (1964), Brown (2008), George and Velleman (2002), Jacquette (2002), Körner (1968),
Mehlberg (1960), and Shapiro (2000).
274 O. Skovsmose
The idolisation of mathematics resonates not only with the idolisation of the
newborn Jesus, but also the idolisation of science in general that was part of the
Modern outlook. Only a few philosophers during that period of time, Friedrich
Nietzsche being one of them, confronted this position. In Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft,
first published in 1882, he ironised over the modern idolisation of science. The
expression Fröhliche Weihnachten is the German version of “Merry Christmas”,
and by talking about “Merry Science”, Nietzsche portrays the worshipping of sci-
ence as ridiculous. Missing Nietzsche’s irony, Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft is trans-
lated into English as The Gay Science (Nietzsche, 1974). Nietzsche cannot associate
any supernatural qualities with science. It is a human – all too human – affair, to use
an expression that was the title of another of his books.6
The philosophy of mathematical practice challenged the Three Magi. This trend
was initiated by Ruben Hersh (1979) when he published the article “Some Proposals
for Reviving the Philosophy of Mathematics”. He found that the philosophical
investigations developed by the Three Magi all suffered from philosophical inbreed-
ing. Instead, the philosophy of mathematics should be rooted in what was taking
place in mathematical research practices. Hersh wanted to establish a philosophy of
mathematics relevant to mathematicians, rather than to philosophers. The philoso-
phy of mathematical practice developed rapidly after Hersh’s initiation. Important
steps were presented in New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics, edited by
Thomas Tymoczko (1986), and detailed elaborations of a range of topics are pre-
sented in The Philosophy of Mathematical Practice edited by Paolo Mancosu
(2008).7
In my summary of philosophical positions, I have not referred to Husserl’s phi-
losophy of mathematics as expressed in Logische Untersuchungen, published in two
volumes in 1900 and 1901 (see Husserl, 2001). The reason is that this philosophy,
although having had a huge impact on the formulation of phenomenology, has not
been part of traditional debate in the philosophy of mathematics. The exclusion of
Husserl might partly be due to Frege’s accusation that Husserl was assuming a psy-
chologist’s position – an accusation that troubled Husserl and which he tried to
show was unjustified.8
It might be that the philosophy of mathematical practice paved the way for the
sociological dimension by, for instance, considering the impact of computers on
mathematical research. Still, the philosophy of mathematical practice did not
address ethical issues. Hersh (1990) published a paper with the title “Mathematics
and Ethics”. The questions he addressed, however, concern what can briefly be
referred to as “the professional conducts of mathematicians” and not the broader
issues concerning the social impact of mathematics. Like the Three Magi, the phi-
losophy of mathematical practice operated in an ethical vacuum. However, in the
6
See Nietzsche (1986).
7
See also Ferreirós (2016) for discussing the very concept of mathematical practices, and Carter
(2019) for providing an overview.
8
Expositions of Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics can be found in Centrone (2010), Haddock
(2006), and Hartimo (2021).
Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice edited by

Bharath Sriraman (2020), one finds one important exception from this claim, namely
Paul Ernest’s (2020) chapter “The Ethics of Mathematical Practice”.
From now on, we will concentrate on challenging the agenda of the philosophy
for mathematics as set by the Three Magi. I am going to move beyond a two-
dimensional philosophy by exploring an ethical dimension.9 An important step in
doing so is to suggest a performative interpretation of mathematics, and my inspira-
tion for doing so emerged from a performative interpretation of language.
14.3 A Performative Interpretation of Language
A performative interpretation of language contradicts a descriptive interpretation

that sees language as providing “pictures” of reality. In the Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus first published in 1922 in a German-English parallel edition, Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1992) presented such a picture theory of language. Here, Wittgenstein
did not talk about language in the plural, but about the language. He had in mind the
formal language of logic and mathematics as presented by Frege in the Begriffsschrift
and by Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica. According to Wittgenstein,
such a language has the capacity to depict reality.
In the Tractatus we find a descriptive interpretation of mathematics, which reso-
nates with both logicism and formalism. We are going to confront this descriptive
interpretation with a performative interpretation of mathematics. The Tractatus is
composed around seven principal statements, where Statement 6 states that what
can be expressed can be expressed in a formal language, while Statement 7 claims
that one should be silent about the rest. As the Tractatus itself is not written in any
formal language, the book concludes with a demolition of its own validity.
Wittgenstein himself came to doubt his descriptive interpretation of language,
and in Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953, he questioned
both the supremacy of formal language and the idea that language provides pictures
of reality. The notion that Wittgenstein (1953) is using for abandoning the descrip-
tive interpretation of language is language game. Through this notion, Wittgenstein
highlights that one is doing something when using language. One is “gaming”. One
is performing. In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein does not propose any
particular priority with respect to the formal language of mathematics. He does not
talk about the game, but rather about language games in the plural. The formal
9
For other attempts to move beyond a two-dimensionality of philosophy of mathematics see, for
instance, Bueno and Linnebo (2009), Hacking (2014), Lakatos (1976), and Linnebo (2017). It is
important to observe that the philosophy of mathematics education does not operate within any
two-dimensionality but establishes itself with many dimensions. This is apparent when consider-
ing the publication in the Philosophy of Mathematics Education Journal edited by Paul Ernest. See
also Ernest (2018a), and Ernest et al. (2016).
276 O. Skovsmose
language of mathematics constitutes just some possible language game amongst

many other possibilities.
Apparently independent of Wittgenstein’s formulations, John Austin also sug-
gested a performative interpretation of language. Certainly, Austin was fully aware
of what he was up against; thus he translated Frege’s Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik
into English as The Foundations of Arithmetic. Austin’s whole approach is con-
densed in the title of a collection of some of his articles: How to Do Things With
Words (Austin, 1962). His point is that the descriptive interpretation of language is
inadequate. We are doing things by means of words. Austin finds that a statement
can have a locutionary content, an illocutionary power, and a perlocutionary effect.
For instance, when making a promise, one is informing another about the content of
a promise (its locutionary content), but one is doing more than that. One is promis-
ing something. A promise has an illocutionary power by putting the person who
makes the promise under an obligation. Finally, a promise has a perlocutionary
effect, which refers to the effect the promise might have. For instance, a person who
listens to the promise being made might doubt whether the promise will be kept.
Austin reaches the conclusion that any statement – and not only statements like
making a promise, making an accusation, and cracking a joke – has locutionary
contents, an illocutionary power, and a perlocutionary effect. Performativity is not
something we choose our linguistic expressions to have or not have. Performativity
is embedded as an integral part of any use of language.
The performative interpretation was elaborated further by John Searle (1969),
who talked about speech acts. This notion grasps explicitly the idea that one acts by
speaking. By means of speech act theory, Searle provides a rounding off of the per-
formative interpretation of language within the outlook of analytical philosophy.
However, this rounding off also opened the way towards much broader performative
interpretations of language.
Different versions of discourse theory present a much more radical perspective
on what can be done by means of language.10 This perspective was anticipated by
Friedrich Nietzsche, when he characterised truth as a “mobile army of metaphors”
(Nietzsche, 2010, §1). A discourse can also be considered a mobile army of meta-
phors, and it can support all kinds of ideologies. Discourses can be mischievous;
they can be the carrier of questionable preconceptions; and simultaneously they can
be powerful. Pierre Bourdieu (1991) talks about symbolic power, which highlights
that discourses constitute real-life interventions and format what we see and
how we act.
Slavoy Žižek (2008) talks about symbolic violence, as he finds that language can
be aggressive. He states the following:
Language simplifies the designating thing, reducing it to a single feature. It dismembers the
thing, destroying its organic unity, treating its parts and properties as autonomous. (p. 61)
For presentations of discourse analysis, see, for instance, Jørgensen and Phillips (2002); and
10
Torfing (1999). I have interpreted mathematics as being a discourse (see Chap. 14 in Skovsmose,
2014a, pp. 199–214), and also ethnomathematics as being discourse (Skovsmose, 2015).
In this condensed formulation, Žižek brings together several metaphoric expres-

sions of discursive acts.11 Language might be used for designating things. According
to the classic understanding of language, to “designate” is the principal function of
language. Žižek’s point, however, is that “designating” is not a simple and t ransparent
process. “Designating” can transform what is then redesignated, as language sim-
plifies the designated thing. In other words, one should not expect language to pro-
vide an accurate picturing of reality: language might distort and misrepresent.
Language might simplify reality by reducing what it is supposed to describe into
a single feature. As an illustration, one can think of the many labels by means of
which groups of people are singled out as being “immigrants”, or “blacks”, or
“criminals”. Such labels might include not only references to different groups of
people, but also brutal acts of classification, deprivation, and accusation. Žižek also
highlights that language dismembers the thing, destroying its organic unity.
Language is a means for making dissections and for cutting things into pieces. As
an illustration, one can consider how meticulous descriptions of work processes can
turn into scrupulous suggestions for further automatisation and, consequently, for
firing people. Such descriptions may strip workers of their human qualities and
conceptualise them as more or less efficient components of a production machinery.
According to Žižek, language treats parts and properties as autonomous. In
order to illustrate this metaphor, one can think of language as a means for paying
attention to something, implying that other things may be ignored. Discourses are
selective, formal languages as well. The many databases that provide resources for
big companies’ promotional strategies operate with particular information about,
say, people’s searches on the Internet, quite apart from whatever else might be rel-
evant to consider with respect to the person. The management of the so-called “big
data” has turned into a paradigmatic example of how bits and pieces of information
are processed in non-transparent ways and turned into a basis for decision-making
with huge impacts.
Precisely what Žižek had in mind when stating that language treats parts and
properties as autonomous, we cannot know. It might be a pointed remark towards
the conception of language adopted by analytic philosophy. According to this con-
ception, the world is composed of logical independent facts, and the basic role of
language is to depict these facts. The idea was advocated by Russell (1905) in the
paper “On Denoting”, where he tries to show that a formal language has an analyti-
cal power in depicting facts that no natural language can demonstrate. This idea was
also advocated by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus where the statement §1.1 claims
“The world is the totality of facts, not of things”, and §2.061 states “Atomic facts are
independent of one another”. Furthermore, it is Wittgenstein’s conviction that only
a formal language is able to depict the totality of facts. This whole outlook was
elaborated in detail by Rudolf Carnap (2003) in Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, first
published in 1928. Carnap made the draft of the book during the period 1922-1925
11
In Chap. 15 “Symbolic Power, Robotting, and Surveilling” in Skovsmose (2014a, pp. 215–230),
I have commented about the same quotation by Žižek. Here I draw on these comments.
278 O. Skovsmose
after he, as a member of the Vienna Circle, had studied the Tractatus. Using updated
terminology, one can claim that the Tractatus presents the world as a collection of
“big data”, which can be depicted by formal systems. This is a way of treating parts
and properties as autonomous.
Language might be powerful and violent by remaining silent about something.
As a consequence, I find it relevant to talk about symbolic silencing, and also to
consider this as being a powerful symbolic act. As an illustration of what this could
mean, I can refer to an observation made by Thomas Eisensee and David Strömberg
(2007). They point out that for every person killed by a volcano, nearly 40,000
people have to die of hunger to get the same probability of coverage in the USA
television news. The global hunger problem can be addressed in different ways;
being silent about it is one possible and cynical way.
By addressing something and by naming it, one might take an important step in
entering a transformative process. For addressing forms of oppression and atroci-
ties, linguistic articulation is important. Such acts I refer to as symbolic articula-
tions. In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the original Portuguese version of which
was published in 1968, Paulo Freire (2005) states:
Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the
world. (p. 88)
[I]t is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue
imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings. (p. 88)
Freire talks about speaking the word and naming the world, which appears to be
a rather a passive activity. But it is not. To name the world is a political act by means
of which one may call attention to cases of oppression and social injustice that oth-
erwise might remain hidden behind a curtain of silence. Patterns of oppression can
be normalised by being ignored. Freire’s concept of naming the world is a paradig-
matic expression of what it could mean to break a symbolic silence by means of a
symbolic articulation. Such an articulation might have a profound socio-political
impact, as an initial step in transforming the world. Freire also talks about “reading
the word” and “reading the world”, which is also a way of expressing a performative
interpretation of language.12
Symbolic power can be acted out as symbolic violence, symbolic silence, sym-
bolic articulation, and certainly in many other ways as well. In general, I will talk
about symbolic acts, whatever the kind of language and acts we are dealing with.
Symbolic acts form world views, decision-making, and actions. I think of a perfor-
mative interpretation of language as a suggestion of what to consider when looking
at language through philosophical lenses. It is a suggestion to not only pay attention
to syntactical patterns, grammatical rules, and semantical structures, but also to
think about what is acted out by means of language. It is a suggestion to consider
the full impact of symbolic acts and how they might form our life-worlds.
12
See Freire and Macedo (1987). I am not aware of Freire referring explicitly to the performative
interpretation of language as suggested by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle. Freire’s performative
interpretation of language appears to be inspired by other resources.
14.4 Performances Through Advanced Mathematics
The performative interpretation of language invites for a performative interpretation

of mathematics. Such an interpretation I have investigated in terms of bringing
mathematics into action (see, for instance, Skovsmose, 2014a, 2015, 2020a, b). In
his discussion of semiotics, Paul Ernest (2021) has indicated the possibility of for-
mulating a performative interpretation of signs. I find this suggestion extremely
interesting as this interpretation might bring about a general point of departure for
both a performative interpretation of language and a performative interpretation of
mathematics. It might be possible to see mathematics brought into action as a sym-
bolic act, and what has been said about symbolic acts in general – and about sym-
bolic violence, symbolic silencing, and symbolic articulation in particular – might
make sense with respect to mathematics. I talk about the “performativity of mathe-
matics” as one talk about the “performativity of language”. Naturally, neither math-
ematics nor language do anything by themselves: it is people doing mathematics
and using the language that drives the performances. But it is convenient to use
these more compressed formulations.
Mathematics forms an integral part of daily-life economic transactions. The
apparently simple act of paying with a credit card takes place on top of a huge
amount of mathematical algorithms put into operation. The code of the card is reg-
istered when we insert the card in the slot machine and press a few numbers. The
amount to be paid is subtracted from the account associated to the card, and an
equivalent amount enters the account of the shop. Everything is apparently due to a
few movements of hands and fingers. However, behind this surface of simplicity a
complex system of mathematical algorithms is brought into action.13 Such algo-
rithms do not just describe what is taking place; they are not merely picturing any-
thing; the algorithms are in fact performing what is taking place.
In Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil (2016) points out that by speed-
ing out of human control, mathematics-based automatics might be one of the causes
of the economic collapse that took place in 2008. Mathematical algorithms form an
integral part of decision-making and risk-taking at the stock market. While previ-
ously decisions about selling and buying were based on human interventions, they
are now, to a large extent, automatised by means of mathematical algorithms.
Algorithmic trading has become a common phenomenon, and decision-making and
risk-taking have turned into advanced mathematical disciplines.14 In this way, the
whole stock market has turn into a gigantic economic experimental laboratory,
where nobody can maintain an overview of what is taking place. The mathematisa-
tion of the stock market is not just a simple improvement of already existing
13
The duality between the apparent simple actions and the mathematical complexity of the under-
lying technology has been expressed in terms of notions of mathematisation and demathematisa-
tion. See Jablonka and Gellert (2007).
14
For a detailed presentation of algorithmic trading, see Johnson (2010). See also Miller (2014) for
a discussion of mathematics-based risk management.
280 O. Skovsmose
procedures; it is a complete mathematics-based reconfiguration of that which is tak-

ing place. Economic crises might be one of the consequences.15
Mathematics formats production processes. In the film Modern Times, Charlie
Chaplin operates as an integral part of a production machinery, and quite literally in
one scene in the film, he gets swallowed up by the machinery. This “swallowing up”
can be taken metaphorically as being an ironic portrayal of modern forms of pro-
duction. However, it can also be interpreted quite literally. Today, in many almost-
automatised production processes, mathematics-based algorithms keep the
processes running. This applies to the production of cars, mobile phones, plastic
boxes, whatever. As part of overall automatisation, workers are assigned particular
tasks. They are swallowed up by the production machinery by being put into the
gaps of otherwise automatised processes. Workers get dismembered and reduced to
components of a production process. The organic unity of the workers’ life-worlds
gets destroyed through the treatment of its parts and properties as autonomous. As
also presented in Modern Times, we are dealing with violent processes.16
Cryptography has been applied in all historical periods. The recurring question
has been: How can we send important information in a form that nobody other than
the intended receiver can decode? In periods of war, this question becomes urgent.
Many techniques have been tried out, invisible ink being just one example. During
the Second World War, a most advanced cryptographic approach was developed by
the Germans. They had constructed a coding and decoding device, the Enigma
Machine, that was efficient to handle. The Enigma system was implemented by
means of a mechanical device with so high a degree of complexity that it appeared
impossible to break the code. Nevertheless, the code was broken, with direct impli-
cations for the course of the war. Later, mechanical cryptographic procedures were
substituted by mathematics-based algorithmic procedures. This made it possible to
encode and decode huge amounts of information and, at the same time, ensure a
new degree of security. Computer-based cryptography, often referred to as modern
cryptography, is based on profound number-theoretical insight, for instance, con-
cerning the distribution of prime numbers and the computational complexity of fac-
torising a natural number that appears as a multiplication of two unknown prime
numbers, say of around 100 digits each. Modern cryptography is crucial to modern
warfare, but it has many other applications as well. It is crucial with respect to the
transfer of any kind of information: of money, of personal data, of business informa-
tion, and of research results. The whole approach of modern cryptography is based
on mathematical algorithms brought into operation.17
The examples to which I have referred up to now concern mathematics, first of
all, as an integral part of some algorithmic procedures. However, mathematics might
also exercise a performative power by shaping the ways we perceive and interpret
15
For a discussion of mathematics and crises, see Skovsmose (2021).
16
For a discussion of high-tech workplace surveillance, see Parenti (2001). For a discussion of the
move from the assembly line to just-in-time procedures, see Lanigan (2007).
17
For a discussion of modern cryptography, see Skovsmose and Yasukawa (2009).
our environment and how we come to act accordingly. Mathematics might, in fact,
form our world-views. In the past, mathematics was crucial for particularising a
geocentric view of the universe. It was, however, also a tremendous mathematical
achievement to present a heliocentric world view. Nicolaus Copernicus demon-
strated how such a view could be formulated mathematically. As a result of this
view, the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church was challenged. Albert Einstein’s theory
of relativity is still an example of a mathematical formation of a world-view, a
world-view with a tremendous impact on war technology. A different kind of
mathematics-based impact on our conception of nature has been pointed out by
Richard Barwell (2013), who highlights that with mathematical climate models, we
provide interpretations of climate change, which might lead to strategies – and also
to inadequate strategies – for trying to cope with such changes.
Today, mathematics has a direct impact on the formation of our knowledge. It
need not only be with respect to the construction of broader world-views, but also
with respect to the composition of bits and pieces of information. Mathematics is an
integral part of computer-based information processing, and the Google search
engine can serve an example. We might assume that, when searching on the net, we
are first of all guided by our own decisions. But we are not. We are simultaneously
guided by a page-ranking device, which determines what pages we will be pre-
sented with and in what order, when typing a search word. The page ranking is
operated by means of a conglomerate of mathematical algorithms, which also can
be modified in order to serve particular business and economic and ideological
interests and priorities. As with respect to the workers’ life-worlds, the possible
organic unity of knowledge gets destroyed by the treatment of its parts and proper-
ties as autonomous bits and pieces of information. The operation of the Google
search engine is just one example of mathematics-based information processing.18
What news, what sports events, and what commercials that we get exposed to are an
algorithmic fabrication. In this way, mathematics becomes part of the formation of
our day-to-day information and consequently of our preoccupations, our interests,
our attentions, and also of what we remain unaware. Symbolic silence, as well as
symbolic articulation, has turned into mathematics-based fabrications.
Investigations of mathematical algorithms are crucial for a performative inter-
pretation of mathematics.19 A profound characteristic of a mathematical algorithm
was formulated by Alan Turing (1937), who provided a step-by-step presentation of
what a calculating machine could do. The presentation was purely theoretical, and
not based on any empirical investigations. The Turing machine, as the calculating
machine soon became named, provides an abstract definition, not only of a mathe-
matical algorithm, but simultaneously of the electronic computer. The Turing
machine makes it possible to interpret the computer as a complexity of
18
For a discussion of the Google page ranking, see Langville and Meyer (2012); and Ravn and
Skovsmose (2019).
19
For an investigation of mathematical algorithms, see Möller and Collignon (2019, 2021).
282 O. Skovsmose
mathematical algorithms, and I see any form of computing as a direct expression of

bringing mathematics into action.
Could a mathematical model create a description of reality without interfering
with this reality? Could a mathematical model “picture” reality in accordance with
the picture theory as presented by Wittgenstein? A mathematical model has been
described as a triple (R, M, f), consisting of a set of empirical objects, R, a set of
mathematical entities, M, and a function f: R → M, which relates reality and math-
ematics.20 Thus, the function f is ascribed the role of doing the picturing. Such a
characteristic of a mathematical model does not indicate much performativity
beyond the very act of “picturing”. However, when a mathematical model is used,
say, for describing a production process with the purpose of identifying further pos-
sibilities for automatisation, it does many more things than “picturing” an actual
process. It captures some features of the situation as being important, say the mea-
sured productivity of the individual worker; it relegates some features as being irrel-
evant, say the family situation of the workers; and it stipulates connections between
different variables, say between the level of payment and the level of productivity.
The performativity of such a model cannot be expressed only in terms of “picturing”
but needs to be expressed also in terms of “capturing”, “relegating”, and “stipulat-
ing”. Conceptions like “simplifying”, “dismembering”, and “destroying” also come
to mind.
One could assume that the situation would be different if a mathematical model
was meant to “picture” not a social but a natural phenomenon. However, if we con-
sider a mathematical model by means of which possible climate changes are dis-
cussed, one will also find that the model does more than “picturing”. It captures
some connections as being important, relegates other features to irrelevance, and
stipulates the nature of certain connections.21 So, even if we start from a picture
theory of mathematical modelling, we come to acknowledge that the model does
much more than picturing. A mathematical model operates as a symbolic language
game among many other possible language games, and each game might provide
different forms of symbolic acts. A symbolic language game might be extremely
powerful. It may be useful to some and violent to others.
By means of mathematics, we format the way we deal with economic transac-
tions, production processes, cryptography, world-views, information processing,
computing, and modelling. We are dealing with powerful performatives of mathe-
matics. Mathematics may operate as a mobile army of metaphors that covers what
we are asserting and doing with a deceitful glitter of objectivity and neutrality. By
means of mathematics, symbolic power can contribute to a deep-structuring of our
life-worlds.
20
See Niss (1989); and Blum and Niss (1991) for such a characteristic of a mathematical model.
For an overview of the present discussion of mathematical modelling, see Cevikbas et al. (2022).
21
For a brief presentation of different components of a climate model, see, for instance,
MacKenzie (2007).
14.5 Performances Through School Mathematics
Any kind of mathematics can be brought into action, including school mathematics.
When talking about school mathematics, I have in mind elementary mathematics,
and not only the mathematics that is presented in a school context, but also, for
instance, in a work context. However, the very expression “elementary mathemat-
ics” might be accompanied by negative connotations, so I prefer instead to talk
about “school mathematics”. With reference to Freire, Eric Gutstein (2006) talks
about reading and writing the world with mathematics. This is an expression of a
performative interpretation of mathematics directly inspired by Freire’s performa-
tive interpretation of language. By means of mathematics, one can articulate a range
of socio-economic facts and thereby open them up to scrutiny. By means of math-
ematics, one can take the initial steps of writing the world. With this expression,
Gutstein refers to changing the world towards a more just society. Gutstein presents
a range of examples of classroom practices where he engages students in reading
and writing the world with mathematics. In this way, he elaborates in great detail
upon a performative interpretation of school mathematics, which he combines with
an activist approach to education.22
In the article “Bringing Critical Mathematics to Work: But Can Numbers
Mobilise?”, Keiko Yasukawa and Tony Brown (2012) raise a crucial question with
respect to a performative interpretation of school mathematics: Can numbers mobil-
ise? They answer this question positively by illustrating how mathematics can help
to provide a critical reading of work conditions. Yasukawa and Brown investigate a
situation where a group of workers was dissatisfied with their working situation and,
in particular, with the way in which “the work was constructed by a particular math-
ematical model” (p. 255). The model determined the workers’ salary as based on
certain measures of their productivity. Yasukawa and Brown analyse how, by articu-
lating this dissatisfaction, it becomes possible to reach an understanding of how the
model maintained an “inequitable an exploitative situation at the workplace”
(p. 261).
Yasukawa and Brown distinguish between four different kinds of mathematical
knowledge related to a work situation. First, they consider the mathematical knowl-
edge that makes it possible for the workers to become qualified for the job. This is
the mathematics which makes up part of their formal qualification. For a bank assis-
tant, it could be accounting, for a woodworker it could be trigonometry, and for an
engineer it could be calculus. (It might be questionable to consider calculus as
school mathematics. However, I see initial courses in calculus as being transitions
between school mathematics and advanced mathematics.) Second, they consider the
mathematics that is actually brought into action in the workplace. For a bank assis-
tant, it might be accounting, although it might well be in a quite different manner
from the accounting that is part of the bank assistant’s formal education. Third, they
consider the mathematics that is relevant for the worker in order to operate in the
22
See also Gutstein (2009, 2012); and Gutstein and Peterson (2006).
284 O. Skovsmose
labour market. This includes the mathematics relevant for controlling salaries and
for verifying tax payments. It might also include the mathematics relevant for deal-
ing with everyday issues, such as drawing up a budget, paying in instalments, and
understanding medical prescriptions. Fourth, they consider the mathematics that is
relevant for “reading” the politics of the workplace. This is the mathematics that is
relevant for critically addressing the way the company determines salaries, specifies
working conditions, and measures levels of productivity. The existence of this
fourth kind of mathematical knowledge brings Yasukawa and Brown to claim that
numbers can mobilise. It is this kind of mathematical knowledge that Gutstein has
in mind when talking about reading and writing the world with mathematics.
One can ask: Can equations mobilise? As part of one of his projects for social
justice, Gutstein engaged his students in a project concerning mortgages and fore-
closures. The starting point for the project was the difficulties that haunted the
neighbourhood in Chicago where the project took place. Gutstein (2018) condensed
the focus of the project in the following way:
Our class was trying to determine whether a family earning the median income in the neigh-
bourhood (around 32,000 US Dollars a year) could afford a home mortgage of 150,000 US
Dollars, with an interest rate of 6 % a year on a 30 years loan. According to the US
Department of Housing and Urban Development, paying more that 30% on one’s income
for housing is considered a “hardship” (p. 131).
Based on this information, the students, around 17-18 years old, calculated that
a family could pay 808 dollars a month in mortgages without hardship. As the text
indicates, the family is taking a loan of 150,000 dollars. However, if we assume that
the family pays what it is able to pay without hardship, it would not be possible for
them to pay off the loan. The students found that after paying 808 dollars a month
for 30 years, the total payment would add up to 291,000 dollars. However, the fam-
ily would still owe the bank about 92,000 dollars. This whole observation was sum-
marised in the following equation:
150.000 291.000 92.000
What are we to think of this equation? It seems that the family has to pay and pay
and pay, without seeing any end to the payment. Such observations could lead to
questions like: Who sets the agenda for such economic transactions? Who has
installed such equations? Are we dealing with an example of economic exploita-
tion? This equation came to mobilise the students.23
The positive answers to the two questions: “Can numbers mobilise?” and “Can
equations mobilise?” indicate that the performativity of school mathematics might
include an articulation of socio-political issues.24 By means of mathematics, stu-
dents might come to see new aspects of their life conditions. They might recognise
that taken-for-granted conditions can be questioned and maybe changed. The
23
See also Gutstein (2016). For a short presentation of the project, see also Skovsmose (2020a).
24
For other examples of how critical mathematics education might be brought into action, see, for
instance Andersson and Barwell (2021).
students’ world-views might be changed, and they might come to act in different
ways. In this sense, school mathematics might form the students’ life-worlds.
One can, however, imagine quite different performatives from school mathemat-
ics, for instance, the formation of a socio-political silence. Such a silence can be
related to the school mathematics tradition dominated by the exercise paradigm.
According to this paradigm, solving exercises establishes the main route for learn-
ing mathematics. The typical mathematical exercise includes information provided
in numbers, and this information is always considered correct and exact. If an exer-
cise informs the price of apples, it is irrelevant for the students to look up other
prices at the supermarket. The information given in numbers is always sufficient for
solving the exercise. There is no need for the students to search for additional infor-
mation for solving an exercise. All the information provided in numbers is also
necessary for solving the exercise. Finally, an exercise has one – and only one – cor-
rect answer.
Within the school mathematics tradition, exercises can refer to mathematical
properties (of a triangle, of a function, of an equation), but they can also be contex-
tualised. However, we are dealing with a contextualisation referring to invented
prices, invented distances, invented travels, and invented salaries. The inventions
are made by the author of the textbook for the only purpose of formulating an exer-
cise. It is never relevant for the students to critically reconsider the contextualisa-
tion. The school mathematics tradition is accompanied by a deep symbolic silence
with respect to socio-political issues.
The school mathematics tradition stimulates an “ideology of certainty”. By this
expression, I refer to the conviction that information presented in numbers can be
trusted and that calculations based on numbers can be considered objective and
neutral. During the school years, a student might well be exposed to around 10,000
exercises. The output of this need not be any deeper understanding of mathematics
but could rather be a faith in the ideology of certainty. This ideology might be part
of the performativity of the school mathematics tradition.
Symbolic violence might also be a feature of the school mathematics tradition.
Such violence is exercised when mathematics education assumes a role as gate
keeper, determining who is going to get access to further education and to the better
jobs in society. Alexandre Pais highlights that mathematics education takes place in
a society where capitalist structures and accompanying ideologies permeate what-
ever is taking place. As an illustration of what this might imply, he considers the
broadly celebrated slogan “mathematics for all”. According to Pais (2012), this slo-
gan covers a cynical irony by concealing the “obscenity of a school system that year
after year throws thousands of people into the garbage bin of society under the
official discourse of an inclusionary and democratic school” (p. 58). This obscenity
is a case of symbolic violence.
How could mathematics education adjust the students so that they could fit into
the existing patterns of capitalist production and consumption? One element of such
an adjustment is to establish and maintain a silence about socio-political issues. “I
have referred to an explicit adjustment to the capital order of things in terms of a
“prescription readiness”. The notion of prescription readiness has been elaborated
286 O. Skovsmose
upon in Skovsmose (2008), where I investigate the functioning of mathematics edu-

cation with respect to the knowledge market. This readiness includes a disposition
to adjust to guidelines and information provided in numbers. By working through
the 10,000 exercises with all information to be taken as given, students get habitu-
ated into a prescription readiness. When entering the labour market, such a readi-
ness makes it easier to fit the workers into any kind of production process, the
content of which is pre-defined. I find that the formation of the coming workforce is
still a case of symbolic violence rooted in the school mathematics tradition.
I think of a performative interpretation of mathematics as a suggestion for what
to consider when looking at mathematics through philosophical lenses. It is a sug-
gestion for not only paying attention to deductive structures, possibilities for reach-
ing certainties, and mathematical correctness, but also to what is acted out by
means of mathematics. It is a suggestion for considering the full impact of mathe-
matics brought into action. It is a suggestion for considering how symbolic acts
routed in mathematics might form our life-worlds.
14.6 Ethical Reflections
Performatives can be associated with any kind of mathematics, just as they can be
associated with any kind of language. The impacts of performatives can be of very
different natures, and therefore ethics becomes an integral part of a philosophy of
mathematics. In Skovsmose (2020a), I have pointed out that mathematics research
and mathematics education at universities and faculties are often conducted in an
ethical vacuum, as they do not engage in ethical reflections with respect to mathe-
matics.25 In the following, I will pay particular attention to ethical reflections related
to what I have referred to as “advanced mathematises”.
Reflections with respect to the impact of mathematics. Mathematics-based acts
may have any kind of impact. They might be insignificant, but they might also be
powerful. Such symbolic acts can be cynical, expensive, benevolent, interesting,
risky, disastrous, aggressive, generous, and creative. While the performativity of
mathematics can be expected, the very nature of this performativity is contested.
Furthermore, it is relevant to talk about both an actual and a potential impact of
mathematics in order to highlight that the consequences of bringing mathematics
into action might not be observed immediately. Advanced number theory was devel-
oped as a purely theoretical discipline long before it became identified as a powerful
basis for cryptography. Both the potential and the actual impact of mathematics
need to be critically addressed.
Reflections with respect to different groups of people. Symbolic acts based on
mathematics can have different qualities, but it is important to be aware that the
25
For a discussion of mathematics and ethics, see also Ernest (2016, 2018b); and Skovsmose
(2020b).
same symbolic act can have very different impacts for different groups of people.
When brought into action for restructuring working processes, mathematics might
add efficiency to the processes and ensure a higher profit for the investors. The
restructuring might create possibilities for reducing the workforce, implying that
some workers might get fired. It might change the content of the work for those that
remain at the workplace. It might establish working tasks that can be completed by
unskilled workers and, in this way, reduce the value and power of the workers.
Reflections with respect to the acting subject. In many cases, the acting subject
appears to be straightforward to identify. It can be a person, a group of people, an
institution, a company, a government, a president, a dictator. However, when math-
ematics is brought into action, the situation might be different. In many cases, it
seems that mathematics tends to hide an action subject. As an example, one can
consider the collapse in 2008 of the financial market: Who was the acting subject in
this situation? If we assume O’Neil’s interpretation, this economic crisis was trig-
gered by certain mathematical algorithms accelerating out of control. However, was
the acting subject the mathematicians creating the algorithms? Was it rather the
computer specialists that implemented the algorithms? Was it the financial institu-
tions – the banks and hedge fund companies – that directed the whole process? Or
should one rather think of the acting subject in terms of some overall neo-liberal
priorities? When reflecting on mathematics-based actions, I find it important to
address issues concerning the possible, but maybe hidden, acting subjects. This is
not only relevant when addressing economic issues, but relevant with respect to any
kind of symbolic acts. Reflections with respect to the possible acting subject makes
up a crucial part of ethical discussions.
Reflections with respect to possible intentions behind the action. Such intentions
might be implicit, but they might also be stated explicitly. Still, the explicitly stated
intentions need not be the real intentions behind an action, which might be less
noble than those explicitly presented. As an illustration, one can consider a possible
research project in number theory. Mathematicians might well express themselves
in mathematical terms referring to the importance of making further theoretical dis-
coveries of mathematical numbers. However, if a group of mathematicians should
make an application for funding for a number-based theoretical project, they might
express themselves differently. They might refer to some possible applications of
number theory and highlight the usefulness with respect to cryptography. The
research funding agency might pay particular attention to some of the possible
applications; this could be with respect to possible military applications, maybe
expressed in terms of the project’s relevance for national security. The multiplicity
of possible intentions that can be associated with the same mathematical activity is
a general phenomenon. Whatever kind of mathematical activity one has in mind,
one should not expect to be able to associate it to a singular set of intentions. It is
important for ethical reflections to address the multiplicity of possible intentions for
engaging in a mathematical activity.
Reflections with respect ethical reflections themselves. When discussing whether
an action is good or bad, it seems consequential to pay attention to the implication
of the action. This idea can be generalised to the ethical position referred to as
288 O. Skovsmose
utilitarianism, which claims that the ethical value of an action can been judged by
considering the full impact of the action. This position has also been referred to as
being a teleological one. This position confronts a deontological one, which claims
that a priori to any discussion of implications, there exist some principles that need
to be considered when judging an action. The deontological perspective has deep
philosophical and also religious roots. The Bible, as well as the Quran, has been
claimed to contain guidelines, according to which any kind of action needs to be
judged. The deontological principle has been advocated by many philosophers,
Immanuel Kant being one of them. Kant, however, did not look into the Bible in
order to identify ethical principles, but did so through analytical investigations.
Originally, the teleological perspective in the form of utilitarianism was presented
by Jeremy Bentham. Being an atheist, Bentham argued that it was not necessary to
look into the Bible or to consider any other forms of holy demands. To judge whether
an act was good or bad was a completely human affair that could be adequately
based on empirical observations.
The reflections that I have presented so far with respect to bringing mathematics
into action have primarily been of a teleological format. However, this perspective
might be insufficient if one wants to address not only the actual, but also the poten-
tial, impact of mathematics. Thus, it seems an irrational affair to try to judge a
mathematics-based action on its impact when we have still not witnessed any such
impact. But what kind of a priori principle should one consider? By making these
comments, I want to indicate that there are deep uncertainties associated with ethi-
cal reflections regarding bringing mathematics into action. Still, I consider such
reflections be necessary.
Ethical reflections concern the potential and actual impact of mathematics. This
impact might be contested, and it might be ambiguous, by affecting different groups
of people in radical different ways. Ethical reflections concern how symbolic acts
rooted in mathematics might influence our ways of interpreting and acting. They
concern how mathematics forms our life-worlds.
The performative interpretation of mathematics establishes ethics as a crucial
element of a philosophy of mathematics. Mathematics can be powerful, fallible, and
mischievous. Contrary to what the Three Magi assumed, mathematics is a human –
all too human – affair.
Acknowledgements I want to thank Daniela Alves, Denner Dias Barros, Manuella Carrijo, Peter
Gates, Jamaal Ince, Amanda Queiroz Moura, Luana Oliveira, Miriam Godoy Penteado, Célia
Roncato, and Débora Vieira de Souza Carneiro for their many helpful comments and suggestions.
I thank Rosalyn Sword for the language editing of the manuscript.
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Chapter 15
Reflective Knowing in the Mathematics
Classroom: The Potential of Philosophical
Inquiry for Critical Mathematics
Education
Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy
15.1 Introduction
“Mathemacy” is an essential competence in critical mathematics education that

goes beyond mathematical knowledge and skills, or even the application of mathe-
matics for solving real-world problems and interpreting outcomes. It requires
“reflective knowledge,” which demands a capacity to make critical judgments about
the social consequences of the use of mathematical tools (Skovsmose, 1994). In
Skovsmose’s words “… mathemacy, as a radical construct, has to be rooted in the
spirit of critique and the project of possibility that enables people to participate in
the understanding and the transformation of their society, and therefore, mathemacy
becomes a precondition for social and cultural emancipation” (1994, p. 27).
Many researchers have expounded on the importance of reflective awareness of
mathematics as tool and as a sort of grammar for describing and predicting reality
(e.g., Davis & Hersh, 1986; Geller & Jablonka, 2007). Given its increasing influ-
ence on our highly technological society, the dangers of neglecting to develop such
an awareness are clear (e.g., Davis & Hersh, 1986; Skovsmose, 1994; D’Ambrosio,
1999; Ernest, 2018, 2019). However, Skovsmose (1994) points out that reflective
knowing is not an ingredient of mathematical or technological knowledge, as its
focus lies outside them. An understanding of the particular way of seeing and under-
standing the world through the lens of mathematics and of the role it plays in society
is not to be found in mathematics. We need to look “beyond” mathematics for dis-
cursive environments that cultivate reflective knowing and for instruments that can
be helpful in grasping the role of mathematics in reading and understanding the
world. In this chapter, I examine more closely the concept of reflective knowing and
argue that philosophical inquiry in collaborative group settings may be an
N. S. Kennedy (*)
City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: nkennedy@citytech.cuny.edu
294 N. S. Kennedy
appropriate vehicle to facilitate critical reflection in the classroom—reflection that

is focused on understanding mathematics as a tool, on its role in society, and on the
implications of using mathematical and technological knowledge in addressing
social problems. I then offer a brief description of what philosophical inquiry is, the
context in which it is conducted, and a framework for conducting philosophical
inquiry in the mathematics classroom by engaging school students in encounters
with contestable questions related to mathematics and its role in society.
15.2 On Reflective Knowing
Skovsmose’s (1994) notion of mathemacy is akin to Paolo Freire’s (2005) notion of

critical literacy. The latter has a socio-political dimension, in that it presupposes an
awareness of the complexity of broad ideological forces, of the functions of power,
and of the universal problem of injustice. Critical literacy relies on dialogue, reflec-
tion, and pointed analysis of controversial and important issues in students’ lives.
Such dialogues function to expose students to multiple perspectives and engage
them in a critique of oppressive structures, in the interest of gaining a deeper under-
standing of the social and political forces that drive them. In this sense, critical
consciousness or “conscientização” (Freire, 2005) is as much about raising aware-
ness as about empowerment, here understood as the ability to act in the world in the
interest of changing it.
Similarly, Skovsmose’s (2007) vision of mathemacy as a competency is not
solely functional—that is, about learning mathematics in order to use it in one’s
personal and professional life. It is also a critical competency, one that engages
people in critique and allows them to participate in “reading the world” through an
emancipatory lens, using mathematics to question deeply seated assumptions and
beliefs, examine implicitly held values, “talk back” to authorities, and imagine
alternatives. Mathemacy is understood as empowering—a competency that opens
the door to active participation in a democratic society.
As formulated by Skovsmose (1994), mathemacy includes mathematical, tech-
nological, and reflective knowing. Mathematical knowing “refers to the competen-
cies we normally describe as mathematical skills,” and technological knowing
“refers to the ability to apply mathematics and formal methods in pursuing techno-
logical aims” (p. 100- 101). The latter relies on mathematization and the interpretive
act of modeling real-world phenomena in purely mathematical terms. In his view,
mathematics as a field of knowledge has a “formatting power” that structures all
aspects of social life in non- transparent ways. He argues that mathematical and
technological knowledge—the competency to solve mathematical problems and
model real world phenomena with mathematics—is limited in addressing this power
apart from a critical approach.
Mathematics does not offer an impartial reading of the world; rather it offers a
particular worldview and epistemology, which may serve various specific political,
economic, or other interests. In our postmodern world, economics, politics, culture,
15 Reflective Knowing in the Mathematics Classroom: The Potential of Philosophical… 295
subjectivity, and identity are deeply informed by meanings filtered through the con-
ceptual lenses of quantification and mathematics as its most formidable facilitator.
Mathematical models regularly determine whether people get a job or a loan,
whether they get into a school, how much they pay for insurance, or how long they
spend in prison. These models often reflect biases and racial prejudices and can
perpetrate profound unfairness and bigotry (O’Neil, 2016; Noble, 2018). Other con-
cerns about mathematical models are related to issues of “social availability” of
mathematical knowledge (Geller & Jablonka, 2007, p. 1). Technology often renders
mathematical processes and their human and material dimensions invisible, codify-
ing them in “packages” that execute mathematical procedures, which makes the
processes and results difficult to question. Technology renders mathematical pack-
ages into “black boxes” of implicit underlying mathematical processes that are “fro-
zen” in objects and technological structures and apparatuses (Gellert & Jablonka,
2007), and not accessible to the general public—a practice that shields them from
accountability and, as such, susceptible to concealing corrupt practices. Not only do
the “black boxes” render the human dimension of their use opaque, but they also
make the embedded interests and values that the models reflect invisible. We are
increasingly faced with what Keithel et al. (1993) refer to as “implicit mathemat-
ics,” the biases of which are not visible. Such processes help increase gaps between
“experts” and “non-experts,” between the designers who understand these structures
and the rest of us who do not, thus reinforcing antidemocratic divisions between an
“expert” elite and consumers (Skovsmose, 2007), thus precluding democratic
participation.
Since mathematics and technology are key tools in developing the infrastructure
of a technological society, their impact is implicated in our approach to every kind
of social problem—whether environmental crises; gender, racial, and income (in)
equality; public schooling; and social welfare programming—and play a ubiquitous
role in understanding these phenomena and influencing them (e.g., O’Neil, 2016;
Noble, 2018; Skovsmose, 2019; Andersson & Barwell, 2021). Moreover, mathe-
matics plays a dual role in that it has both descriptive and prescriptive powers; while
claiming objective neutrality, it in fact directly stipulates actions and behavior. Not
only does mathematics have descriptive and prescriptive powers, but it also becomes
embodied in our thinking and action (Fisher, 2007). As such, it may lead to blind
acceptance of the products of mathematization and a lack of awareness of how
mathematics operates and its effects on society and subjectivity. Unless there is a
recognition of these aspects of the operation of mathematics and its implicit episte-
mology, only narrow views of the discipline will result, and mathematics will be
forever associated with the myth of objectivity, truth, and a value-free form of judg-
ment. Excavation of the invisible dimensions associated with the uses of mathemat-
ics is necessary, as Skovsmose aptly puts it, because “... mathematical and
technological knowledge are born ‘shortsighted’” (1994, p. 99). Reflective knowing
acts to counter the covert effects of mathematics and its hegemonic epistemological
power. “It has to do,” he argues, “with the evaluation and general discussion of what
is identified as a technological aim and the social and ethical consequences of pur-
suing that aim with selected tools” (p. 101). It represents the competence required
296 N. S. Kennedy
for the ability to “take a justified stand” in discussions that concerns technological
questions (p. 101).
Indeed, some types of reflective knowing associated with mathematical problem-
solving and modeling are grounded in mathematical and technological knowledge
and are referred to by Skovsmose as the “technical evaluation of a model”
(Skovsmose, 2019, p. 10). These types of reflection concern questions related to
calculation correctness, appropriate choice of algorithms, and the reliability of the
solutions and are representative of the meta-reflection typically considered part and
parcel of good mathematical practice (Skovsmose, 1994, p. 118). However, other
types of reflective knowing extend beyond the boundaries of mathematics.
Skovsmose describes these as focused on questions as to whether mathematics
needs to be used in a particular situation, as well as the broader consequences of its
uses. These concern a critique of the social consequences of enacted mathematics
and require a close examination of the assumptions, values, norms, and ethics that
are implicit in the mathematization process. Inquiry into such questions and con-
cerns qualify as philosophical rather than mathematical and require philosophical
rather than mathematical judgments. As such, it would seem that promoting reflec-
tive knowing in the mathematics classroom would necessitate, not only that students
learn to use mathematical methods to explore social, environmental, or economic
questions but also that they reflect as well on mathematics as a tool and its role and
uses in society.
Skovsmose argues that a kind of mathematical archeology needs to take place:
first in uncovering the mathematics, which may be opaque, used in a given situation,
and second, in drawing attention to and discussing the manifestation of its format-
ting power in that situation. Archeological excavation, as Anthony Giddens (1994)
points out, involves digging deep and taking all pieces out, then cleaning and estab-
lishing connections between them, which is a critical interpretive task. This process
would require a different set of lenses than the mathematical. As Stephen Toulmin
(1961) aptly observes: “We see the world through them [the lenses] to such an
extent that we forget what it would look like without them: our very commitment to
them tends to blind us to other possibilities” (p. 101). The only way to gain a differ-
ent perspective and to “unthink” the ideas filtered through these mathematical lenses
is to remove them for purposes of analysis. As Toulmin observes, “It is impossible
to focus both on them [the lenses] and through them at the same time” (p. 101). On
the other hand, the anthropologist and semiotician Gregory Bateson (2002) advo-
cates for bringing different perspectives together. He uses the metaphor of stereo-
scopic vision to promote the idea of combining perspectives in order to achieve an
“extra depth,” particularly when one of these perspectives offers an outsider’s
breadth of vision on the other.
In this chapter, I advocate for combining mathematical with philosophical per-
spectives. I consider this approach to be compatible with the goals of critical math-
ematics education in regard to the development of mathemacy and of the habits and
dispositions that promote and sustain democratic citizenship. Other scholars have
argued for including philosophy in the teaching of mathematics. Prediger (2005),
for example, has argued for including reflection in the mathematical classroom in
the area of mathematical content and practice, epistemology, and the philosophical
base of mathematics. Skovsmose (2020) considers the overwhelming emphasis in
mathematics courses on doing mathematics without reflecting on its possible social
impacts as a manifestation of “inserting mathematics into an ethical vacuum” and as
extremely problematic. Ernest (2018) proposes that aspects of philosophy of math-
ematics and especially the ethics of mathematics be included in school and univer-
sity mathematics curricula.
I argue here for the inclusion of the practice of philosophical inquiry in the con-
text of collective and deliberative dialogue in the mathematics classroom and pro-
pose that such an approach offers a pathway whereby students are encouraged to
become more aware of the complex relationship between mathematics and society,
more critical in their understanding of mathematics and its products, and better
equipped for participation in democratic forms of life. I consider this approach to be
compatible with the goals of critical mathematics education in regard to the devel-
opment of mathemacy and of the habits and dispositions that promote and sustain
democratic citizenship. Thus, I suggest that philosophical inquiry can act as a vehi-
cle that facilitates reflective knowing in the mathematical domain. In what follows,
I will explore one practical form of philosophical inquiry in educational settings that
lends itself particularly well to this project.
15.3 Philosophical Inquiry, Dialogue, and Judgment
For a model for conducting philosophical inquiry, we turn to a program founded in

the 1970s and internationally known as Philosophy for Children (P4C).1 The pro-
gram uses a pedagogical format known as “community of philosophical inquiry”
(CPI) (Lipman, 2003), conceptualized as a communal dialogical process that bases
its practice on philosophical questions and concepts generated by students them-
selves in response to a stimulus in the form of a text or other media. The program
founders— Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp (1980)—developed a CPI curriculum
consisting of philosophically provocative stories written for children and thema-
tized teacher manuals that focus on central, common, and contestable concepts
found there such as friendship, freedom, justice, beauty, persons, mind, body,
authority, conflict, truth, and “real” (Lipman, 1981; Lipman et al., 1980). Although
Lipman and Sharp did not envision philosophical discussions focused on questions
concerning mathematics or its impact on society, I suggest that the methodology
(not the curriculum per se) can be used to engage students in critical examination of
the role of mathematics in society, as well as mathematics in general—in other
words, to conduct meta-mathematical reflections through dialogical inquiry.
1
For more information about the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program, see the Institute for the
Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC, https://www.montclair.edu/iapc/); the
International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC, https://www.icpic.org/);
Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO, https://www.plato-philosophy.org/).
298 N. S. Kennedy
In a classroom CPI, the philosophical discourse in question is reconstructed as

more practical and more accessible to students than is traditionally the case. The
inquiry begins with some kind of problem which gives rise to a more general philo-
sophical question—what is the most reasonable thing to believe or to value or to do
in this case?—and ends in some kind of satisfactory resolution or fulfillment in the
nature of a judgment. The latter tends to be a proposition about what should be
believed or valued or done with regard to the original problem. In P4C methodol-
ogy, inquiry begins with students generating questions based on a reading of an
excerpt of a curricular novel, followed by determining the group’s interests and
creating an agenda for discussion.
Philosophical inquiry focuses on “big questions” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) or
common, central, and contestable (CCC) questions (Splitter & Sharp, 1995): they
are common to all humans in some form, central to our understanding of ourselves
and of the world, and contestable, as they do not have one simple answer. They are
also questions that lend themselves best to communal, collaborative deliberation in
a setting in which participants are engaged in putting forward and evaluating argu-
ments and arriving at reasonable judgments as to those arguments through dialogue.
Philosophical inquiry so understood relies on the Deweyan proposition that ethical,
aesthetic, political, and other philosophical dimensions describe facets of most peo-
ple’s ordinary experience rather than some esoteric experiences separated from the
ordinary (Dewey, 1934; Lipman, 2003). It also takes on Dewey’s notion that inquiry
should connect to student’s own questions and respond to genuine perplexity and
doubt (Dewey, 1910/1997).
In the context of the mathematics classroom, philosophical inquiry can serve as
a vehicle for an inquiry focused on contestable questions that are not discipline-
specific but act to question the outcomes of the uses of mathematics in society.
Some examples of questions might be “What part does mathematics play in the way
we organize our lives?” or questions related to social justice such as the following:
“What is fair wealth distribution? How should wealth be distributed?” These can be
qualified as philosophical questions to the extent that they explore political and ethi-
cal dimensions of our experience with mathematics. Such a project draws heavily
on Dewey’s idea that inquiry should begin with a particular experience—in this case
an experience that involves a mathematical activity. The mathematical activity
makes for a shared group event, and the problematization that follows in the discus-
sion can motivate students to inquire further in a search for answers to related, rel-
evant, contestable questions. In other words, the mathematical activity acts to
structure the inquiry that follows it, or to use Dewey’s term, to “occasion” it.
In my own experience with conducting philosophical inquiry in the context of a
mathematics classroom, I have used written texts about mathematics or posed math-
ematical tasks the experience of which occasions the generation of students’ philo-
sophical questions (e.g., Kennedy, 2018, 2020). What is seen and felt as problematic
and perplexing must reflect the experiences of the group of students—not only those
experiences related to the mathematical activity, but previous personal school and
out-of- school experiences as well. Above all, the initial goal of inquiry with con-
tested questions related to mathematics is to help students reflect on and challenge
deep-seated assumptions, critically explore values and social practices, and discuss
social alternatives.
The process is teleological—it aims at a product. As Lipman observes, “Inquiry
is a self-corrective practice in which a subject matter is investigated with the aim of
discovering or inventing ways of dealing with what is problematic. The products of
inquiry are judgments.” (Lipman, 2003, p. 184). The ideal immediate goal is for the
participants to arrive at one or more reasonable philosophical judgments regarding
the questions or issues that occasioned the dialogue. For example, with regard to
ethical inquiry, Lipman et al. insist that, “Students must not only be encouraged to
express their beliefs …. but to discuss and analyze them, considering the reasons for
and against holding them, until they can arrive at reflective value judgments that are
more firmly founded and defensible than their original preferences may have been”
(Lipman et al., 1980, p. 47). The product of the inquiry should be a collective goal,
guided by the Socratic dictum that we “follow the argument where it leads” rather
than being solely invested in a one’s own personal argument.
“Inquiry dialogue,” as Douglas Walton (1998) calls it, is truth-directed and aims
at arriving collectively at a conclusion or judgment on a common, central, and con-
testable issue that is deemed the most reasonable and acceptable by the community
(Gregory, 2007). For a philosophical judgment to be reasonable, it must be well
reasoned, well informed, and personally meaningful (Lipman, 2003). Judgments
are justified in part by their reliance on sound arguments and good evidence. For a
judgment to be reasonable, it must be informed by multiple and diverse perspectives
and able to withstand the evaluation and critique of the dialogical community. The
discourse of CPI assumes the Pragmatist view that good thinking is social and that
the ability to think well is acquired through participation in a thinking community
where one is both challenged and assisted in the effort to be clearer, more consis-
tent, and more creative (e.g., Dewey, 1910/1997; Pierce, 1958). In that individual
thinking is limited and susceptible to error, it is likely to be strengthened by being
made accountable to a community of peers (Lipman et al., 1980). Because there is
no authority external to the community of inquiry that can correct limitations or
shortsightedness, the evolution of participants’ insights and skills is the only means
of producing and improving the arguments and the judgements in play. The reason-
ableness of the community’s judgment depends on the ongoing reconstruction of
the participants’ individual and shared understandings, through individual and
group self- correction.
The teacher has the important role of organizing and facilitating the inquiry. He
or she introduces a stimulus—a text, a mathematical activity, or a list of questions
related to a previous activity. She may invite students to pose their own questions
related to previously collectively experienced mathematical activity or suggest a
question for discussion and encourage students to offer arguments. In a CPI, teach-
ers invite students to propose, evaluate, and build on each other’s arguments and to
agree and disagree in a spirit of ongoing, collaborative search for truth. They invite
students to make certain logical and dialogical moves, which they model in the
course of the discussion: to ask questions, agree or disagree, give reasons, offer a
hypothesis or explanation, or make a statement, offer an example or a
300 N. S. Kennedy
counterexample, make comparisons, classify/categorize, identify an assumption,

offer a definition, make a distinction, self-correct, among others (Kennedy, 2013).
They also facilitate the sequencing of student moves by inviting students to make
interventions, by encouraging them to connect and respond to what has been said,
by making or asking for clarifications or restatements, by offering or asking for
summarization, and by managing turn taking.
The teacher acts to orchestrate the inquiry with the goal of focusing and moving
the inquiry further through scaffolding the inquiry process with questions, counter-
examples, restatements, and summarizations. In cases in which the community
might align with only one side of an argument, the facilitator may offer a different
perspective, another possible argument, or counterexample. For example, she might
say “And what would you say if someone said…….”, or “What about thinking about
this issue in a different way, for example….” Teachers act as facilitators of the dia-
logue and, as Lipman puts it, as “ . . . ‘pedagogically strong but philosophically
self-effacing’ so that they can strengthen the reasoning and judgement of their stu-
dents, thereby getting them to think for themselves, while at the same time the
teachers try to avoid indoctrinating their pupils with their own personal opinions.”
(1993, p. 296) Frequently the facilitator may need, in order to keep the discussion
philosophical and productive, to negotiate between her own inclination and the
desire of students to discuss questions that range across disciplinary boundaries and
are not fruitfully addressed by dialogue, for example, questions that already have
definitive answers, questions that can only be answered by calculation, observation,
or experiment, and questions that are psychological and concern feelings and
moods. As participants in a genuine pursuit of meaning regarding questions that
they have taken up by their own volition, students come to develop personally
meaningful judgments. Such judgments are of another order from “accepted truth”
typically passed on to them by the teacher. Instead, they are developed and pursued
through engaged participation in collective, deliberative, reflective thinking about
mathematics and its impact on current social structures, and a result of careful eval-
uation of the ideas and assumptions aired by the group in response to an important
question.
15.4 A Framework for Philosophical Inquiry in Mathematics
In this section, I offer a Framework for Philosophical Inquiry in Mathematics as

shown in Table 15.1. The Framework is intended for use in engaging students with
philosophical questions about mathematics, its uses in society, and its relations to
other disciplines. It adopts and extends Skovsmose’s (2001) notion of “landscapes
of mathematical investigation” which may refer respectively (1) to mathematical
concepts per se; (2) to invented (textbook) mathematics situations such as word
problems, and (3) to real-world situations described mathematically, as in mathe-
matical modeling. In his view, mathematical activities can be guided by any of these
three references and can be narrowly constructed as exercises or as discussions. I
Table 15.1 Framework for philosophical inquiry in mathematics

Philosophical
inquiry landscape Sample questions Sample goals
1. With reference to What is number? Is infinity a Explore questions related to the nature
mathematical number? What can or cannot be of mathematics; the power of
concepts expressed in numbers? mathematical knowledge in describing,
Is there a connection between understanding, and predicting
symmetry and beauty? Is phenomena; its limitations; its
symmetry important for plants, formatting power on the society and
animals or life in general? If so, ourselves
how?
Where does mathematics come
from?
Is mathematics the best way to
understand the world? Is it a
way to understand ourselves?
2. With reference to What are we assuming? Might Problematize the “simple” and
invented (textbook) different assumptions change “narrow” frame of the situation,
situations our interpretations of the investigate assumptions, and consider
situation? What are the most how different assumptions might
reasonable assumptions? change outcomes
3. With reference to What is a mathematical Problematize mathematical descriptions
real situations description (model)? What is (models) as “accurate” representation of
described omitted during mathematical a situation and as products of
mathematically modeling? Is there anything mathematical abstraction
that a model might miss or Facilitate understanding that different
misrepresent? criteria may be at play in judging the
What are the assumptions success of such models and that value
under which the model judgments may prioritize one model
operates? What criteria have over another
been used to judge that your
mathematical model is
successful?
What values underlie this
model?
use Skovsmose’s concept of “landscapes of investigation” to conceptualize land-

scapes of philosophical investigation.
In the framework offered below, each of the three landscapes offers a discursive
space for engaging in communal philosophical inquiry and for encountering the
sorts of questions mentioned below (Table 15.1).
15.4.1 Inquiry with Reference to Mathematical Concepts
Inquiries related to specific mathematical concepts might encourage a search for

meanings that have not traditionally been the focus of school mathematics. For
example, aesthetic inquiry into mathematical notions, like symmetry or fractals,
302 N. S. Kennedy
offers the possibility of exploring potential connections between symmetry and

beauty, patterning and intrinsic order. Other, ontological inquiries may focus on
interdisciplinary connections—biology for example, in which we explore the math-
ematically expressible relations inherent in the world of plants, animals, or life in
general.
One could go further and discuss the following questions with ethical implica-
tions: Does mathematical knowledge of the world and the use of a mathematical
approach to studying the world actually inhibit or distract us from other, equally or,
in some cases, more powerful forms of knowledge? Is mathematics always a good
lens to look through when we try to understand the world? Can mathematics be
helpful in trying to understand ourselves? Is there anything that it might miss?
Mathematics students commonly question its usefulness, which is related, in
turn, to its evident relation to the lived world that we all inhabit in more or less the
same spatiotemporal way. Our goal is to encourage questions that go deeper than
the utilitarian uses of mathematics—questions that stimulate critical inquiry into
our culturally constructed and transmitted beliefs and assumptions about mathemat-
ics and to heighten awareness of both its power and limitations (Kennedy, 2018).
Such inquiry can open dialogue about the implications of the uses of mathematics
in society and about the ways subjectivity and lifeworld are informed by meanings
filtered through the conceptual lenses of number, measurement, probability, and
mathematical modeling.
15.4.2 Inquiry with Reference to Invented

(Textbook) Situations
Textbook word problems typically refer to situations that have been invented for the
purpose of a mathematical exercise. Usually, such exercises do not invite students to
bring their own personal experiences and practical understanding to the classroom.
However, there is much to gain from mathematics problems that are treated as
ambiguous and open to interpretation. Kennedy (2012) offers examples of tasks that
were designated for use as straightforward mathematical exercises but were treated
as “texts” to be interpreted. One task used in a group discussion with middle school
students reads as follows: A frog finds itself at the bottom of a 30-foot well. Each
hour, it climbs 3 feet and slips back 2 feet. How many hours would it take the frog to
get out? Students were asked to work collaboratively on interpreting this problem
through offering definitions and identifying implicit assumptions. A major benefit
of this form of inquiry is the by-product of the experience of collective engagement,
which could be anything from an understanding that a mathematical task could be
often “read” and interpreted in different ways, to the realization that assumptions
buried deep in the statement of a problem can make a distinct difference in terms of
its final solution.
15.4.3 Inquiry with Reference to Real Situations

Described Mathematically
Typically, the inquiry landscape that relates to real-life situations is framed by math-
ematical tasks involving real data. Kennedy (2022) describes an activity with mid-
dle school students who were asked to describe their room mathematically. The
descriptions volunteered by students varied: some made drawings portraying the
colors and the patterns of their wallpaper, flowers on their desks, etc. Others drew
rectangles with smaller rectangles inside them, showing the placements of their bed
and desk; yet others offered a list of measurements of the length, width, and square
footage of the room. These representations were then used to initiate a comparison
between them and to discuss the question: What is a mathematical description?
How is it different from another, say an artist’s or a poet’s descriptions?
Often enough one discussion opens the door to more questions from the group.
For example, collaborative inquiry into the question, “What is a mathematical
description?,” has led to new questions such as the following: “Why can’t math
descriptions have all the information in them? Are math descriptions useful if they
don’t have all the information in them? How do we know which is the best math
description? Why do people use math descriptions? Are mathematical descriptions
always helpful? What can we gain by using them? What can be lost in using them?
Can a math description be harmful?”
Similarly, when discussing mathematics modeling tasks with high school stu-
dents, we might widen the inquiry to a deliberation on the extent to which such
models describe the “real world,” which in turn suggests the obvious metaphysical
question. Such discussions might help students develop a better understanding of
models as products of mathematical abstraction that necessarily omit or limit part of
the reality they describe. Often some of the judgments that the model developers
make are value judgments; therefore, it is crucial to examine how different values
may prioritize one model over another. Ethical inquiries could be extended to con-
sider the fairness of a model. For example, a purely mathematical model of a given
set of benefits distributions could prompt inquiry as to whether it is fair to all pos-
sible beneficiaries. What are the assumptions under which the model operates? Are
there some possible beneficiaries who might have been left out? Kennedy (2020)
offers an example of an activity using US wealth distribution data, which was intro-
duced to initiate an ethical inquiry based on the question: What constitutes equitable
(fair) distribution of human goods? The inquiry invoked several contestable con-
cepts such as fairness in matters of wealth, responsibility for others, basic needs,
living in an ethical manner, and the impact of unequal wealth distribution on soci-
ety—questions that emerged in the course of the inquiry and which ended with a
number of further questions that could be pursued in the future.
To summarize, the Framework for Philosophical Inquiry offers a format that
encourages students to engage with contestable questions about the field of mathe-
matics, both in its internal relations and its relation to the world.
304 N. S. Kennedy
15.5 The Potential Role of Philosophical Inquiry

in the Classroom
As has been suggested, philosophical inquiry in the classroom can be orchestrated as a

form of collective, intellectually rigorous and engaging dialogue focused on common,
central and contestable questions, challenging and critiquing implicit assumptions, and
dedicated to the reconstruction of concepts (Lipman, 2003), thereby facilitating the
acquisition of an enriched overarching view of mathematics and its connections to
other school disciplines. It may aid in opening a “wider horizon of interpretation” that
includes a critical dimension (Kennedy, 2018). Philosophical dialogue requires an
“outsider” perspective and thus promises to furnish a more global view of mathemat-
ics, its nature, and its instrumentarium. Such a perspective allows for the examination
of the epistemological assumptions that influence the role of mathematics in social
reproduction—most importantly in normalizing instrumental and calculative ways of
thinking (Ernest, 2018)—and thus in organizing everyday experience. A widened per-
spective includes the examination of mathematics as a cultural product, and philosoph-
ical inquiry promises to facilitate that examination, leading to a widened, deepened,
more nuanced understanding of the discipline, thereby offering a space for the critical
examination of its role in society, and the political implications of its uses.
Mathematics as a system and method includes not only the mode of access to the
products of mathematization but also the mode of studying, using, interpreting, and
evaluating them; thus, as has been pointed out by many researchers, mathematics also
acquires prescriptive and symbolic power (Davis & Hersh, 1986; Skovsmose, 1994).
Unless these aspects of mathematics are brought into the open and discussed, there is
an obvious danger of our students turning into uncritical consumers of mathematics
with little or no understanding of the worldview it reinforces and with no critical com-
petence to judge mathematical productions and prescriptions. If participation in a
democratic society is not restricted to following formal procedures of elections and
government, but is understood as participating in direct democracy or, in Deweyan
terms, as “a mode of associated living,” then citizens must be able to critically appraise
and scrutinize not only the math instrumentarium and its uses but also the implications
of those uses. The urgency of the need for the inclusion of critical inquiry into the ethi-
cal, social, and political aspects of the uses of mathematics is particularly salient now,
as we examine how mathematical and technological forms of decision-making may
be implicated in societal poverty, income inequality, racial injustice, social inequities,
climate change, world hunger, educational gaps, and to what extent uncritical and
unethical exploitation of mathematical knowledge may exacerbate these deep-seated
problems. Inquiry into the ethical questions that pervade an increasingly mathema-
tized world not only promises to raise awareness of the dangers of deceptively “value-
free” mathematics but also promises to open dialogue about the moral responsibility
of the creators and users of mathematical and technological knowledge.
Yet another inquiry that may have far-reaching implications for the development
of the critical mathematical subject, and the prospects for the emergence of a truly
autonomous citizenry, is epistemological. “Personal epistemology,” a term now
commonly used to denote personal beliefs about knowledge and knowing (Kuhn
et al., 2000), is increasingly recognized as a powerful hidden shaper of student
expectations and learning practices, and thus as crucial for individual learning and
development. Epistemological inquiry could also potentially function as “under-
laborer”—to use Ernest’s term (2018)—that is, to help clear obstacles to learning
mathematics that stem from false beliefs and misconceptions about its practice that
make a crucial difference for success or failure in the classroom, in particular,
received notions about who can do math and is good at it. Ernest’s use of the term
“under-laborer” is particularly fitting in identifying philosophical dialogue as a
potential force in the reconstruction of students’ beliefs, attitudes, and images of
mathematics, which could work as a powerful mechanism in breaking the “failure
cycles” (negative attitudes — > reduced learning —> mathematical failure) that he
describes. Since philosophical inquiry is premised on students’ own questions and
on their active engagement in the rethinking and the reconceptualizing of received
views, philosophical dialogue typically involves a process of taking apart and put-
ting together, weighing differences, reformulating, and reconceptualizing. Such a
collaborative engagement in developing students’ personal views promises to pro-
duce deeper engagement with the discipline and world view of mathematics and
thus to influence future mathematical experiences.
Finally, philosophical inquiry promises to play a key role in the reconstruction of
beliefs about oneself as a mathematics learner. The discipline has become a forbid-
ding gatekeeper for many economic, educational, and political opportunities for stu-
dents, many of whom have developed self-narratives that act to prevent them from
identifying themselves as capable math learners. As such, disrupting such self-
narratives and working proactively to reconstruct negative mathematical identities
represent an important educational task. Collaborative philosophical inquiry acts to
challenge these narratives and to facilitate reflection and ongoing reconstruction, and
thus represents a potent mechanism for nurturing students’ mathematical identities.
In short, philosophical inquiry could potentially play a role in developing an
expanded and more critical view of mathematics—one that offers more meaningful
connections and interactions with students’ personal experiences and which opens
a view of the ethical and political implications of the use of mathematics for society
which is essential to a healthy democracy. As such, dialogical philosophical inquiry
represents a potentially transformative classroom practice in engaging, challenging,
and reconstructing students’ views of mathematics, as well as their beliefs, atti-
tudes, identities, and level of engagement with the discipline.
15.6 Conclusion
In his masterwork Democracy and Education, Dewey (1916) highlighted the role of
education in fostering a democratic society, which depends on the development of
individuals as responsible citizens able to make informed and intelligent decisions
leading to the public good. Although he recognized the importance of education in
306 N. S. Kennedy
the development of citizens who are able to think for themselves, his educational
model is based on scientific as opposed to philosophical inquiry and thought.
However, contemporary critical mathematics education researchers point out that
mathematical literacy, if solely understood as acquiring mathematical and techno-
logical (i.e., “scientific”) knowledge, is limited in promoting democratic competen-
cies (e.g., Skovsmose, 1994, 2007; D’Ambrosio, 1999; Ernest, 2018). In respect to
mathematics education, such literacy should include an analytical dimension that
facilitates a critique of mathematics in its philosophical and social implications. In
this chapter, I have examined Skovsmose’s notion of reflective knowing as associ-
ated with critique. I have suggested that philosophical inquiry offers a vehicle for
conducting such a critique and briefly outlined a methodology for communal and
collective deliberations in a classroom setting designed to facilitate such an inquiry.
Finally, I have offered a framework for philosophical inquiry in the mathematics
classroom, extending Skovsmose’s (2001) notion of “landscapes of mathematical
investigation” to include the practice of engaging students in philosophical inquiry
into common, central, and contestable questions related to the field of mathematics,
both in its internal relations and its relation to the world. In short, conducting philo-
sophical inquiry as a complement to existing mathematical practice in the class-
room promises to provide another, crucial dimension to mathematics education, in
that it represents a vehicle for questioning and critique and offers a discursive and
pedagogical space dedicated to developing an enriched and expanded view of math-
ematics, as well as a deeper understanding of its connections to other school disci-
plines, to society, and to self.
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Chapter 16
Mathematical Modelling: A Philosophy
of Science Perspective
Uwe Schürmann
16.1 Introduction
The (analytical) separation between mathematics and reality can be found in numer-
ous publications on mathematical modelling. For instance, PISA, the Programme
for International Student Assessment (OECD, 2009), uses the following diagram in
its mathematical framework (Fig. 16.1), where mathematics and the real world are
considered to be separate domains.
Also, the introduction of the 14th study of the International Commission on
Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) on modelling and applications (Blum et al., 2007)
shows a modelling cycle distinguishing between mathematics and an extra-
mathematical world. Additionally, this separation is also postulated in various
contributions to the volumes of the International Community of Teachers of
Mathematical Modelling and Application (ICTMA).
Figure 16.2 presents a modelling cycle by Blum and Leiß, which is frequently
cited in German-language literature on mathematical modelling and is used
(sometimes modified or extended) in various works (cf. Greefrath, 2011; Ludwig &
Reit, 2013). Borromeo Ferri (2006) offers a carefully elaborated overview of many
of these modelling cycles. It is clear from this overview that the (analytical)
separation between mathematics and reality is omnipresent in the reconstruction of
modelling processes.
In contrast, only a few publications are questioning this separation. For instance,
Biehler et al. (2015) analyse modelling processes in engineering classes and conclude
from their analysis that it is rather inadequate to separate mathematics and the “rest of
the world” as well as to divide modelling processes into certain distinct phases. From
U. Schürmann (*)
Primary School Institute, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland,
Muttenz, Switzerland
e-mail: uwe.schuermann@fhnw.ch
310 U. Schürmann
Fig. 16.1 Modelling cycle in PISA’s theoretical framework (OECD, 2009, p. 105)
real mathematical 1 Understanding

model model 2 Simplifying/Structuring
2 3 Mathematising
4 Working mathematically
real 1 situation
situation model
4 5 Interpreting
6 Validating
6
real mathematical
results results
rest of
5
the world mathematics
Fig. 16.2 Modelling cycle by Blum and Leiß (2006)
their point of view, mathematical aspects must be considered during the step of sim-
plification (part of the “rest of the world” in most of the modelling cycles), already.
This theoretical insight is supported by a subsequent empirical investigation by the
authors. Furthermore, Voigt (2011, p. 868) identifies the analytical separation between
mathematics and reality as a problem that can only be solved if we take a close look
at the area between the “rest of the world” and “mathematics”. Consequently, he con-
siders this “intermediate realm” as substantial. Voigt strongly advocates examining
not the separation but the connection between these two spheres.
This builds the starting point: In the following, the relationship between mathe-
matics and reality will be explored in more detail. In this way, the question is posed
whether and to what extent the analytical separation of mathematics and reality can
be justified or whether it should be supplemented or even replaced by an alternative
interpretation of the relationship between mathematics and reality.
16.1.1 Orientation
The separation between mathematics and reality, as found in many modelling

cycles, can be interpreted in at least three different ways.
16 Mathematical Modelling: A Philosophy of Science Perspective 311
1. As an ontological separation according to which mathematics by its very nature

would have to be distinguished from reality, the real world, or the rest of the world
2. As an analytical separation primarily serving to describe modelling activities
adequately, i.e. to be able to empirically research them
3. As a separation that makes sense from a constructive point of view and serves to
support learners while working on modelling tasks
The three interpretations mentioned are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually
dependent. Nevertheless, the author hypothesises that when mathematics education
research considers mathematics and reality as two distinct realms promoting a
constructive point of view becomes more likely. Each of the three interpretations
mentioned is problematised in the literature against the background of different
perspectives. For instance, Voigt (2011, p. 869) asks whether in placing the “real
situation” at the beginning of the modelling process—far from mathematics—the
ideal of an everyday life orientation is expressed, under which one imagines that
mathematics develops out of an everyday life untainted by any mathematics. Such
notions are undermined in various contributions to mathematics education research.
Niss (1994, p. 371), for example, mentions that mathematics is confronted with a
“relevance paradox”. On the one hand, mathematics is becoming more and more
relevant and, at the same time, more and more irrelevant, since mathematics plays a
pivotal role in the development of technical devices, yet the operation of these
technical devices no longer requires mathematical literacy. Keitel’s (1989) pair of
terms de-/mathematisation points in the same direction. However, these terms
emphasise the social significance of mathematics more strongly and problematise
the use of supposedly realistic mathematics tasks in the classroom. Keitel introduces
the pair of terms de-/mathematisation to describe those processes leading to
mathematics—in terms of mechanisation and automation— increasingly
determining our living environment (mathematisation). At the same time,
mathematics increasingly disappears from everyday life (demathematisation) since
the skills that were previously required are henceforth taken from humans by a
technical device. Skovsmose and Borba (2004) critically examine the ideological
effect of mathematics and its teaching within social contexts. They argue that if
mathematics is considered a perfect system and an infallible tool for solving real
problems, political control is in favour.
So, the separation between mathematics and reality cannot be understood as a
fixed boundary, at least not within social contexts. A domain that is part of the “rest
of the world” can be mathematised very soon. Since students gain experience in
their mathematised environment way before mathematical concept formation
processes take place in the classroom, the everyday life orientation of mathematics
education, as outlined by Voigt with critical intent, should rather be rejected.
Another problematising perspective on the relationship between mathematics
and reality is offered by those historical-philosophical approaches that are usually
assigned to postmodernism. These approaches explicate the historical contexts from
which a specific, prevailing image of mathematics has emerged. Deleuze (Deleuze,
1994; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), for instance, sees a problematising side of
mathematics alongside the prevailing axiomatising formalisation of mathematics.
312 U. Schürmann
By using historical examples— first and foremost the development of calculus by

Leibniz—he elaborates on the possibility of dynamic mathematics emerging from
concrete problems (cf. de Freitas, 2013; Smith, 2006). Châtelet (2000) highlights
the representational side of mathematics by using historical examples to illustrate
several ways in which mathematics’ innovations and concepts are strongly
dependent on the mathematical tools and forms of graphic representation used at a
given time. In doing so, he interprets diagrams as a section of a sequence of physical
gestures and thus relates the formal side of mathematics to its material and, above
all, physical basis.
De Freitas and Sinclair (2014) take up this idea when they map out their didactics
of mathematical concepts. They emphasise the material and ontological side of
mathematics in addition to the logical and epistemological. Schürmann (2018a)
points in the same direction as he attempts to show that mathematical models, in
particular, do not merely serve knowledge, but should also be understood as entities,
i.e. in addition to their epistemological function, their ontological side needs
consideration, too. Furthermore, Schürmann (2018b) deals with the origin of
historical knowledge formations that may have contributed to the separation of
mathematics and reality. Using Frege’s logicism and Hilbert’s formalist programs
as paradigms (Frege, 1884, 1892; Hilbert, 1903) against the background of what
Foucault calls the episteme of modernity (Foucault, 1996) this separation is
understood as a reaction to the relativisation of mathematical truth claims within the
nineteenth century.
The literature cited here clarifies that the boundary between mathematics and
reality is historically conditioned. A further problematisation of the separation of
mathematics and reality emerges from those empirical studies focusing on individual
modelling processes. Regarding these studies, students already consider relationships
between the mathematical content and parts of the real world long before setting up
a mathematical model. Biehler et al. (2015) and Meyer and Voigt (2010) give a
critique of the analytical separation of mathematics and reality based on this
empirical finding.
16.1.2 Focus
Since mathematics education research on modelling is largely detached from the

philosophical discussion on models, which goes on for more than 100 years,1 this
chapter elucidates the separation of mathematics and reality against the background
of the philosophy of science on models.
Here, the philosophy of science is understood as a subdomain of philosophy in
which the validity claims of empirical sciences and mathematics are scrutinised, for
1
In order to prove this thesis, the author has reviewed the bibliographies of all contributions in the
ICTMA volumes published so far. It turns out that none of these contributions refer to relevant
works from the philosophy of science.
instance, by reconstructing scientific theories. However, the philosophy of science

concerning the humanities (e.g. hermeneutics) is excluded, even though such an
approach may be of interest under certain conditions.2
Additionally, the following is mainly about the relationship between mathemat-
ics and reality in the context of theories and models. An epistemological question of
the perception of reality is not raised here, although it is not intended to deny the
importance of fundamental epistemological questions for the understanding of
mathematical modelling.
The approach is to take up considerations from the philosophy of science on the
relationship between theories, models, and reality and apply them to mathematics
education research. For this purpose, two central views within analytical philosophy,
the syntactic and the semantic view, are juxtaposed and related to mathematical
modelling in the classroom. This selection is not intended to question divergent
approaches, such as the pragmatic view on models (cf. Gelfert, 2017; Winther,
2016). The restriction to the two views mentioned above is merely for pragmatic
reasons. Even these two views can only be outlined here. However, their discussion
provides valuable information for answering the following questions:
1. Epistemological question: Is the analytical separation between mathematics and
reality, often found in mathematics education research on modelling, tenable as
such against the background of analytical philosophy, or does it need to be
revised or at least relativised?
2. Methodological question: Does the discussion on the syntactic and semantic
view on models and theories offer new insights into the description of
mathematical modelling in the classroom? In particular, can methodological
tools be derived that describe modelling processes more appropriately and
accurately?
A third, rather constructive question, arising from an assumed separation between
mathematics and reality, is excluded here. It is not asked whether the separation
between mathematics and reality supports the learners in the processing of
modelling tasks.
16.2 Analysis
Large parts of the philosophy of science’s discussion on models have their origins
in model theory, a subdomain of mathematical logic. To also grasp scientific models
and theories, mathematical logic’s angle, formerly focused on formal languages,
was widened. From now on, natural and scientific languages are considered as well,
i.e. formal languages are understood as subsets of natural languages.
2
Frigg and Salis (2019), for example, compare models with (literary) fiction.
314 U. Schürmann
The syntax of a language L consists of its vocabulary and the rules for forming
well-defined expressions in L. The semantics of L allows the interpretation of well-
defined expressions by mapping them to another relational structure R. Thus, on the
one hand, well-defined expressions from L are made comprehensible, and, on the
other hand, these expressions can be examined within L for their validity. Then, the
distinction between syntax and semantics initially leads to two opposing (but
related) views on models and theories, the syntactic and the semantic view. The
syntactic view on scientific theories was developed primarily by representatives of
the Vienna Circle. Due to this, this view on theories and models is closely connected
to logical positivism or logical empiricism,3 which had a huge impact on the
philosophy of science in the twentieth century until the 1960s (cf. Gelfert, 2017).
Very likely, the achievements of the natural sciences in conjunction with the rapidly
developing axiomatic-formal mathematics at the beginning of the twentieth century
were decisive for the increasing influence of logical positivism.
The semantic view on theories and models has emerged largely in response to the
syntactic view and its associated obstacles (some of them will be discussed below).
The main difference between the two may be that the syntactic view attempts to
describe theory building in an idealised form, while the semantic approach tries to
outline theory building in terms of scientific practice. Due to the large amount of
literature, it is necessary to select among the authors referred to in this chapter.
From the syntactic view, the oeuvre of Rudolf Carnap is considered paradigmatic
(Carnap, 1939, 1956, 1958, 1969). The analysis of the semantic view is based on the
works of Patrick Suppes (1957, 1960, 1962, 1967).
16.2.1 Carnap’s Syntactic View on Models
From Carnap’s (1969, pp. 255 ff., 1958; see also Suppe, 1971) syntactic point of
view, theories can be reconstructed based on propositions. A theory is formulated in
a language L that consists of two sub-languages, the theoretical language LT and the
observational language LO. The descriptive constants of LT are named theoretical
terms or t-terms. Those of LO are called “observable” (Carnap, 1969, p. 225),
observational terms or o-terms (Carnap, 1969, p. 255). O-terms denote observable
objects or processes and the relations between them, e.g. “Zurich”, “cold” and
“heavy”. T-terms are those that cannot be explicitly defined by o-terms, i.e. they
cannot be derived from perception. Carnap’s given examples are fundamental terms
of theoretical physics such as “mass” or “temperature” (Carnap, 1958, p. 237). This
distinction leads to three different types of propositions:
3
Even though the Vienna Circle’s members did not use the term “logical positivism” for them-
selves, this chapter does not distinguish between logical positivism and logical empiricism. Creath
(2017) points out that a distinction between the two terms along theoretical assumptions and socio-
logical viewpoints cannot be made meaningfully anyway.
1. Observational propositions containing o-terms but no t-terms

2. Mixed propositions containing t-terms and o-terms
3. Theoretical propositions containing t-terms but no o-terms
According to this approach, a theory in language L is based on two types of pos-
tulates: the theoretical or t-postulates and the correspondence or c-postulates, also
called correspondence rules (Carnap, 1969) or protocol theorems (Carnap, 1932).
T- postulates are pure t-propositions, i.e. they belong to type (3) of the three types of
propositions listed above. T-postulates comprise all fundamental laws of a theory.
For instance, these can be the fundamental laws of classical mechanics or the main
laws of thermodynamics. T-postulates are therefore the axioms of a theory. They are
taken for granted. All statements s that can be derived purely syntactically from the
t-postulates also belong to LT. The derivation of such statements is based on syntac-
tic rules, which can contain further rules of formation in addition to mathematical
rules. LT in itself has no (empirical) meaning. The meaning of t-terms is only given
indirectly using LO. Carnap assumes that o-terms refer to directly observable or at
least almost directly observable physical objects or processes and relations between
them (Carnap, 1969, pp. 225 ff.). In the following, this direct interpretation will be
called d-interpretation. Thus, the semantics of o-terms is directly given. It is not
possible to derive empirical statements from theoretical statements, i.e. from propo-
sitions of type (3), it is not possible to conclude propositions of type (1) without
further ado. Rules are needed, the so-called c-postulates, to connect t-terms with
o-terms. For instance, Carnap (1969, p. 233) mentions the measurement of electro-
magnetic oscillations of a certain frequency, which is made visible by the display of
a certain colour. C-postulates thus connect something visible with something invis-
ible. Nevertheless, they do not thereby make the invisible itself visible.
The t-term to be interpreted remains theoretical. This kind of interpretation has
therefore to be distinguished from the d-interpretation of the o-term. Moreover, the
interpretation remains incomplete since it is always possible to establish further
rules to connect t-terms with o-terms. Since the interpretation of t-terms using
c-postulates is partial, it is called p-interpretation in the following.
To Carnap, it is important not to confuse c-postulates with definitions (Carnap,
1956, p. 48). The definition of t-terms itself is theoretical and can only be given
adequately within LT. A t-term is interpreted logically within LT, which is why this
kind of interpretation is called l-interpretation in the following. It is not possible to
define a t- term completely by relating it to o-terms via c-postulates. Carnap gives
us the following explanation: The terms of geometry as defined by Hilbert are
entirely theoretical. However, if they are used within an empirical theory, their
empirical use would have to be introduced with the help of c-postulates. However,
no geometric o-term, such as “ray of light” or “taut string”, corresponds to the
theoretical properties of the t-term straight line (Carnap, 1969, p. 236).
Equipped with this repertoire of concepts, Carnap’s understanding of empirical
theories can be defined.
316 U. Schürmann
A theory is a proposition. This proposition is the conjunction of the two propositions T and
C, where T is the conjunction of all t-postulates and C is the conjunction of all c-postulates.
(Carnap, 1969, p. 266, translation by the author)
To emphasise this connection, Carnap uses the abbreviation TC for theories.

Now that we have a clear and distinctive definition of what Carnap calls a theory, we
go on to explicate Carnap’s view on models. Carnap distinguishes descriptive
models of physics, which are built from real objects like a model ship, from scientific
models in a contemporary sense. As in mathematics and logic, a model in the natural
sciences in the twentieth century was understood to be an “abstract, conceptual
structure”. In this sense, a model is a simplified description of a (physical, economic,
sociological, or other) structure in which abstract concepts are mathematically
connected (Carnap, 1969, pp. 174–175).
By highlighting the importance of non-Euclidean geometry for physics, espe-
cially for the development of the theory of relativity, Carnap infers that it is not
disadvantageous for theories if they cannot be visualised without difficulty. In this
way, he opposes the idea that models are a sort of visualisation. For Carnap, the
visualising character of models is only a makeshift or a didactic aid that merely
brings the benefit of being able to think about theories in vivid pictures (Carnap,
1939, p. 210). According to Carnap, models only play a significant role in the devel-
opment of empirical theories if they establish a connection between LT and LO. These
“constructing models” (Carnap, 1959, p. 204) serve the p- interpretation of t-terms
and, in this sense, are nothing else than c-postulates.
16.2.2 Suppes’ Semantic View on Models
The objections to the syntactic view are numerous (cf. Achinstein, 1963, 1965;
Suppe, 1971, 1989, 2000; Suppes, 1967; van Fraassen, 1980; see also Liu, 1997;
Winther, 2016). Some of these objections are:
1. The formalisation of theories as linguistic entities is inadequate and obscures the
underlying structures of theories.
2. Theory testing is oversimplified in the syntactic view since it is assumed that
propositions from LO can be directly linked to phenomena.
3. The pure distinction between o- and t-terms is not tenable if the characterisation
of o-terms or t-terms is insufficient.
4. P-interpretation remains undefined and all possible ways to define p-interpreta-
tion lead to inconsistencies in the syntactic view.
The semantic view on theories and models can essentially be understood as a
reaction to the shortcomings of the syntactic view outlined here (Gelfert, 2017;
Portides, 2017). Thus, the meta-mathematical description of theories through formal
languages is (largely) rejected in the semantic view. While the syntactic view tries
to describe scientific theories in logical languages, the semantic approach asks what
kind of mathematical models are used in the sciences (Winther, 2016). Mathematical
tools are available for the direct analysis of such structures. In contrast, a
reformulation of a theory in a specific formal language tends to be impractical,
especially for those theories with rather complicated structures (Suppes, 1957,
pp. 248–249).
Moreover, a direct description of mathematical structures may be independent of
a particular language. From Suppes’ semantic point of view, a theory is composed
of a set of set-theoretic structures satisfying the different linguistic formulations of
a theory. Worth mentioning that besides this conception of the semantic view, at
least one differing semantic approach—the so-called state-space approach—exists
(e.g. van Fraassen, 1980), which describes physical systems by vectors. In the
semantic view, a model of a theory is a structure and should not be confused with
the linguistic description of that structure. Propositions of a theory, expressed in a
particular linguistic formulation, are merely interpreted within that structure.
[A] model of a theory may be defined as a possible realization in which all valid sentences
of the theory are satisfied, and a possible realization of the theory is an entity of the
appropriate set-theoretical structure. (Suppes, 1962; see also Suppes, 1957, 1960, p. 253)
This emphasises the importance of models for theory building, and along with it
the importance of nonlinguistic structures overall. Furthermore, Suppes points out
that theories cannot be related directly to experimental data. Accordingly, the
d-interpretation of o-terms in experimental settings is dismissed. Rather, this
connection is only established indirectly via what Suppes calls models of data
(Suppes, 1962). While models of a theory are possible realisations of a theory,
models of data are possible realisations of experimental data. By this conception,
Suppes circumvents objection (2), as listed above. In addition, even if a hierarchy
between these different types of models is assumed, they are nevertheless connected
by an isomorphism between the two types of models (for a critique of this connection
by isomorphism, see Suárez, 2003). Objections (3) and (4) are discussed in more
detail in the following sections “Theoretical and Empirical Concepts” and
“Correspondence Rules and Partial Interpretation”.
16.2.3 Theoretical and Empirical Concepts
The separation between o- and t-terms is challenged from different perspectives.

Putnam (1962), for instance, indicates the possibility of formulating theories that do
not contain any t-terms. He quotes Darwin’s theory of evolution as an example. He
thus questions whether the separation of LO and LT is at all necessary. Consequently,
theories that manage without t-terms could also not be reconstructed as the
proposition TC in Carnap’s sense.
Putnam then goes on to say that the mere distinction between o- and t-terms is
not sufficient at all. He points out that terms that do not belong to LO cannot be
considered t- terms automatically.
318 U. Schürmann
Moreover, it is unclear which criterion separates LT from LO. Carnap assumes that
from a pragmatic point of view, a clear distinction can usually be made between the
two (Carnap, 1969, p. 255). It is only decisive whether a term designates a directly
or at least indirectly observable entity. Otherwise, it is a t-term. According to
Achinstein (1965), this criterion is not exhaustive. For instance, an electron, usually
a non-observable term, can be considered observable in certain contexts and under
certain conditions. He concludes that the term electron cannot be unambiguously
assigned to either LT or LO. Rather, the conditions for o-terms must be made explicit
in more detail.
Therefore, Achinstein discusses another criterion that could justify the separa-
tion into o- and t-terms. T-terms could be distinguished from o-terms based on their
theoretical character (cf. Hanson, 1958). According to this distinction, a term would
be theory-laden and thus a t-term if it cannot be understood without its theoretical
background. To Achinstein, even this distinction is not sufficient to divide o- and
t-terms more clearly. A term can be essential in the context of a certain theory, while
in another corresponding theory, it is rather independent. Thus, for each term, it
must be made clear which theory in particular forms the background. Putnam (1962)
also argues that there are no terms that belong exclusively to LO. For instance, the
colour red, which is considered an o-term in everyday language, is a t-term (red
corpuscles) in Newton’s corpuscular theory of light. So, the question is posed how
to define t-terms more precisely.
Another criticism of the syntactic view deals with the possibility to make a the-
ory-free perception at all. This focuses upon the syntactic view’s assumption that
o-terms can be interpreted by direct or at least indirect observation of real
phenomena. Seen from the syntactic perspective, o-terms must be interpreted with
direct reference to real phenomena, since indirect observation by instruments
already implies l-interpretation.
To perceive objects without recourse to a theoretical background is questioned
by other authors. Can there be such a thing as mere observation or does observation
always require interpretation of sensory impressions? Hanson (1958, pp. 5–13)
gives us various examples here: two biologists looking at an amoeba may see
different things because of their different theoretical backgrounds, Tycho Brahe
who would not recognise the telescope in a cylinder, as Kepler presumably would,
etc. Hanson goes on by describing optical perceptions. He explains that seeing as a
mere perception on the retina is always already an interpretation as soon as it enters
consciousness. This also illustrates that observational concepts cannot be related to
objects directly.
16.2.4 Correspondence Rules and Partial Interpretation
According to the syntactic view, o-terms are connected to t-terms by correspon-

dence rules (Carnap’s c-postulates). The assumption is that correspondence rules
are the p-interpretation of a t-term. However, not all t-terms of a theory have to be
partially interpretable. While an o-term must always be directly interpretable,

t-terms may exist without c-postulate partially interpreting them. Such t-terms are
only indirectly connected with LO by being connected in LT with other t-terms that
can be partially interpreted. For instance, the square root of 2 is unobservable.
Nevertheless, it can be indirectly connected with o-terms via an l-interpretation if it
is interpreted as the side length of the square with the area 2. For the c-postulates of
a theory, Carnap (1956) formulates the following rules.
1. The set of c-postulates of a theory must be finite.
2. All c-postulates must be logically compatible with the t-postulates.
3. The c-postulates do not contain terms neither belonging to LT nor to LO.
4. Each c-postulate must contain at least one t-term and o-term.
However, apart from the explanation by examples and these rules for c-postu-
lates, Carnap does not define more clearly what is meant by p-interpretation. This
lack of clarification is criticised by various authors (cf. Achinstein, 1963, 1965;
Putnam, 1962). Hence, Putnam discusses three ways to define p-interpretation:
1. [T]o ‘partially interpret’ a theory is to specify a non-empty class of intended
models. If the specified class has one member, the interpretation is complete; if
more than one, properly partial.
2. To partially interpret a term P could mean […] to specify a verification-refuta-
tion procedure.
3. Most simply, one might say that to partially interpret a formal language is to
interpret part of the language (e.g. to provide translations into common language
for some terms and leave the others mere dummy symbols). (Putnam, 1962)
Definition 1 Putnam objects to the first definition. To define a class of models simi-
lar in structure to the theory in parts, (a) mathematical concepts, theoretical by defi-
nition, are required, and the argument would become circular. Furthermore, he
points out (b) that models require certain broad-spectrum terms (e.g. physical object
or physical quantity). Such terms cannot be defined a priori, as Quine (1957) illus-
trates by the meta-concept “science”. Accordingly, it is possible that such terms do
not acquire their meaning through p-interpretation in a particular model, but within
a theoretical framework based on the conventions of a research community.
Consequently, logical positivists like Carnap must reject such concepts as meta-
physical. Ultimately, it refers (c) to the problem that a theory with an empty class of
models can no longer be called false, but merely meaningless.
Definition 2 According to Putnam, the second understanding of p-interpretation
also proves to be unsustainable. If for every concept or proposition a procedure for
its confirmation or its refutation is specified, this would lead to curious statements
against the background of the philosophical position of verificationism as advocated
by Carnap. According to verificationism, only those (synthetic) statements may be
true that can be empirically verified. Using the example of the sun and the helium it
contains, Putnam draws attention to the following problem. Although it is possible
to prove that the sun contains helium, no procedure can be used to prove that helium
320 U. Schürmann
exists in every part of the sun. If this confirming or refuting procedure is missing,
the truth value is indeterminate. In consequence, one would have to claim that the
sun contains helium, whereas it cannot be said for parts of the sun, whether there is
helium or not.
Definition 3 The third and last possible definition of p-interpretation, that LT is
only interpreted in parts, is rejected by Putnam in just one sentence. Such a view
would lead to certain theoretical terms ultimately having no meaning at all. A part
of LT would be interpreted into everyday language, for example, and the remaining
part of the t-terms would merely consist of dummy terms.
16.3 Modelling in Mathematics Classroom from a Syntactic

Point of View
In the following, mathematical modelling in the classroom is interpreted against the

background of Carnap’s syntactic view, while bearing in mind criticism from a
semantic point of view. For that, the posed epistemological and methodological
questions are focused. Since Carnap’s syntactic view first and foremost describes an
ideal of empirical sciences, modifications must be made to transfer this to modelling
in mathematics education. Axiomatised mathematics cannot be assumed for
mathematics teaching, but mathematics in LT that students master. Furthermore, it is
not assumed that an understanding of mathematics in Carnap’s formal sense prevails
among the students. To describe a modelling process, it is sufficient to reformulate
students’ usage of terms in Carnap’s sense. In this context, mathematical terms used
by students in theoretical regards are classified as t-terms. Those that refer to
observable objects are classified as o- terms.
The problem of theoretical terms is serious. Nevertheless, when it comes to
mathematical modelling, most of the terms used are mathematical terms and
therefore of theoretical nature. Thus, mathematical concepts in school also have a
certain theoretical character if students can l-interpretate them to a certain extent.
Likewise, students can understand that mathematical concepts are in principle
unobservable, even if they can be illustrated. However, Achinstein’s (1963, 1965)
and Putnam’s (1962) objections to the separation of theoretical and empirical terms
remain considered insofar that the t-terms used in the context of mathematical
modelling are always t-theoretical. In means of students’ modelling processes, this
implies that t-terms are dependent on the mathematics available to students.
Even when transferring Carnap’s syntactic view to the description of learners’
mathematical modelling, Putnam’s objections (1962, p. 245) to different definitions
of p- interpretation are still considered. If p-interpretation of mathematical terms is
considered as building a set of intended models, theoretical terms are required
indeed. However, this science-theoretical problem concerns the consistency of the
syntactic view of theory building. This problem may be less important when it
comes to p-interpretation within modelling processes taking place in the mathematics
classroom. In fact, trying to provide an appropriate procedure for confirming or

refuting each t-term can lead to some odd statements. For modelling problems in the
classroom, however, this can also be a rather subordinate problem. Mathematics
lessons usually consider those parts of reality for which such confirmation or
refutation procedures exist. Furthermore, the third definition of p-interpretation,
interpreting parts of LT and leaving the remaining terms aside, is rather a duty for
mathematics teaching than a real objection. Every t-term of mathematics should be
made semantically accessible to students. Here, the psychological argument is that
interpretation of mathematical content through its application leads to an improved
and deeper understanding of such content (cf. Blum, 1996, p. 21–22).
16.3.1 Epistemological Question
The purpose of this chapter is to prove if the separation between mathematics and
reality, often found in mathematics education research on modelling, is tenable as
such against the background of analytical philosophy. By discussing Carnap’s
syntactic view of theories and models, it becomes clear that this separation needs to
be revised.
Carnap’s syntactic view captures more precisely the connection between math-
ematics and reality. In contrast to the dichotomous separation between mathematics
and reality in many modelling cycles, there is at least a twofold gradation from
mathematics in LT, via empirical-mathematical concepts in LO, to real-world phe-
nomena. In a modelling process, (school) mathematics is to be understood as the
theoretical (part of a) language with which students can proceed syntactically.
Reality, or the “rest of the world”, is henceforth divided into an observational lan-
guage, which itself is not yet a reality, and a part that is identified with real-world
phenomena (Fig. 16.3).
Bearing this picture in mind, the criticism of many so-called modelling tasks in
mathematics textbooks can be justified by the fact that no real problem is actually
solved by the students in the context of a modelling process. Most likely, those tasks
take place only in the sphere of theoretical and observational language. While the
translation process between these two parts of the language is crucial for making
sense of pure mathematical concepts, it does not involve any connection to real-
world phenomena. This insight is probably obscured by an overly simplistic
juxtaposition of reality and mathematics in many modelling cycles.
Moreover, Carnap’s interpretation of models in science as c-postulates, marking
the area between theoretical and observational language, and Suppes’ objection that
models of data, marking the area between observational language and real-world
phenomena, have to be considered as well. While three models appear in the
modelling cycle proposed by Blum and Leiß (“situation model” and “real model” in
the realm of reality, and “mathematical model” in the realm of mathematics,
Fig. 16.2), we can now capture more accurately the nature of models in mathematical
modelling processes. Models are translation rules both for the translation between
322 U. Schürmann
Fig. 16.3 Carnap’s

syntactic view on theories
visualised
theoretical and observational language and for the translation between real-world
phenomena and observational language.
Here, the crucial point is that the connection between the two domains of the
language at issue is given by assumed rules, not by nature. This finding circumvents
lots of epistemological obstacles (e.g. questions about the nature of mathematical
terms and their possible empirical origin do not need to be answered for the syntactic
view to work). Finally, the competencies described in the modelling cycle can now
be interpreted against the background of the previous discussion of theories and
models. Working mathematically (step 4 in the modelling cycle according to Blum
& Leiß, 2006) can be identified with the l-interpretation, mathematising as a
transition from the “rest of the world” to “mathematics” (step 3, ibid.) and
interpreting as a transition into the opposite direction (step 5, ibid.) is associated
with Carnap’s p-interpretation. The decisive difference is that p-interpretation does
not indicate the transition from mathematics to reality and vice versa but only a
transition between two parts of a language. The d- interpretation is pivotal in making
the transition from LO to real-world phenomena (step 1, ibid.). Here, models of data
are crucial.
It becomes obvious why, as Meyer and Voigt (2010) note, connections from math-
ematics need to be considered already in the step of simplification. Learners work
with o-terms in the step of simplification. However, these must be connected, even
implicitly, with t-terms. They form what Voigt (2011) calls the “intermediate area”.
16.3.2 Methodological Question
The methodological question of whether the discussion on the syntactic and seman-
tic views on models and theories offers new insights for the description of mathe-
matical modelling in the classroom can now be answered against the background of
the previous discussion. The goal is to derive methodological tools that describe
modelling processes more appropriately and accurately compared to standard mod-
elling cycles. To this end, Carnap’s syntactic view and Suppes’ criticism of it are
considered.
One of the main objections to the syntactic view is that the formalisation of theo-
ries as linguistic entities tends to be inadequate because it obscures the underlying
structures of theories. While this objection may be crucial for discussion in the
philosophy of science, the attempt to focus on the underlying (mathematical) struc-
tures tends to be a hindrance when it comes to empirical research in mathematics
education. Students’ utterances (written, spoken, or expressed by gestures) can be
directly observed, whereas the underlying mathematical structures can only be
conjectured. With its distinction between theoretical and observational terms, the
syntactic view provides a tool for a more detailed analysis of students’ utterances.
For instance, when a student uses the word “triangle”, it is decisive whether the
word is used in a theoretical way, for example, in a mathematical theorem, or
whether it is used in a sentence to describe real-world phenomena. At this point,
Suppes’ objection to the theoretical-observational distinction must be considered.
The discussion in the section on “Theoretical and Empirical Concepts” shows very
briefly that it cannot be said that a concept, by its nature, belongs to either LT or
LO. Nevertheless, the distinction holds when the theoretical or observational
character of a term is considered against the background of the theory T in question.
Stegmüller’s (1970) solution to this problem is that a term can be called T-theoretical
(or T-observable) in the case that T is the theory under consideration. The theoretical
character of a term depends on the theory we are talking about. Carnap’s definition
of a theory (TC is the conjunction of T and C, while T is the conjunction of all
t-postulates and C is the conjunction of all c-postulates) reminds us that a clear
description of the theoretical background taught to students is necessary when
mathematical modelling processes are captured empirically. The question is what
theoretical tools (i.e. mathematical theorems, procedures, etc.) are on the theoretical
side and what correspondence rules for translation between LT and LO are accessible
to students.
In order to take a closer look at students’ modelling processes, it is necessary to
reconsider Carnaps’ notion of the connection between LT and LO given by
c-postulates. Although for Carnap, an ideal theory only includes c-postulates, i.e.
axioms that translate between LT and LO, he points out that it is not essential for this
connection that correspondence rules have the character of an axiom.
The particular form chosen for the rules C is not essential. They might be formulated as
rules of inference or as postulates. (Carnap, 1956, p. 47)
324 U. Schürmann
We can thus distinguish between the individual mental models expressed in stu-
dents’ utterances and the more normative models thought in class to make sense of
pure mathematical concepts and to give students the ability to solve real-world
problems.
From a normative point of view, it is necessary to describe rather abstract models
that fit a wide range of situations. This involves the four rules for the formation of
c- postulates (see section “Correspondence Rules and Partial Interpretation”). Under
these conditions, the goal is to formulate as many (but still independent) c-postulates
as possible, so that as many situations as possible that fit a notion of pure mathematics
are covered by a certain set of c-postulates. Putnam’s main objections to this
understanding of partial interpretation (specifying a class of intended models) are
that (a) pure mathematical terms (e.g. set) are needed and the procedure would
become circular, and that (b) broad-spectrum terms are needed (e.g. physical object,
physical quantity, etc.) that cannot be defined a priori and whose meaning cannot be
given by partial interpretation via correspondence rules. While these objections can
seriously affect the syntactic view when the focus is on the normative description of
an ideal theory, they tend not to negatively affect the goal of describing students’
modelling processes. Rather, these objections remind us that every description of
individual modelling processes and even the establishment of normative models are
limited by the framing through inherently broad-spectrum terms and (meta-)
mathematical terms in use.
Bearing in mind, that correspondence rules not necessarily need to be formulated
in a set of axioms, this offers an opportunity to analyse students’ (implicit) use of
correspondence rules in modelling processes. As we will see, this provides a
methodological tool that leads to different results than the analyses that depend on
standard modelling cycles and their inherent epistemological assumptions. Let us
take a look at the mathematics task from a textbook for fifth and sixth graders:
The African grey parrot can grow up to 40 cm long; a flamingo of about 200 cm. How many
times bigger is the flamingo compared to the grey parrot? (Prediger, 2009, p. 6, translation
by the author)
From a normative point of view, the area of mathematics addressed in this task
can be narrowed down to the structure of natural numbers in connection with
multiplication (N, ·). On the observational side, questions can be formulated such as
“how often does one length fit into another?” or “how many times larger is this
length compared to another?”. The connection between LT and LO is then given by a
p-interpretation containing at least two c-rules. Thus, c-rule c1 connects—for
instance—the number 1 with the observable length of 1 cm, while c-rule c2 connects
multiplication with a temporal- successive action (e.g. “an empirical length is
juxtaposed until the length used for comparison is reached”). The model at issue
here is the description of the structure (N, ·) using the linguistic means from LO,
given by c1 and c2. If T is the conjunction of all true propositions in LT about the
structure (N, ·) and C is the conjunction of c1 and c2, the theoretical background of
the task is given by the conjunction TC. This interpretation of (N, ·) by c1 and c2
remains partial. In contrast, an l-interpretation of (N, ·) within LT, (e.g. as the addition
of equal addends) is complete. Again, it should be mentioned that c1 and c2 do not

connect mathematics with reality, but theoretical terms of mathematics (t-terms)
with empirical terms (o-terms). Hence, it is a purely linguistic connection. With this
revision of the task in mind, we can now analyse individual utterances of students
confronted with this task. To do this, individual modelling is analysed by
reconstructing the reasoning within the modelling according to the Toulmin scheme
(Toulmin, 1996). Thereby, the use of c-rules—whether implicit or explicit—has to
be taken into account.
Due to the limitation of a book chapter, the focus is on a single case study, the
student Anton. Anton is interviewed while solving the task (cf. Prediger, 2009). At
the beginning of the interview, Anton soon says, “The flamingo is 160 cm taller”.
The genesis of this statement can be reconstructed with the help of the Toulmin
scheme as follows (Fig. 16.4).
Against the background of common modelling cycles, Anton’s statement must
be interpreted as an individual construction of whether a situation model, a real
model, or a mathematical model. However, a rational reconstruction shows that
none of Anton’s possible considerations can be the mere result of modelling
processes taking place exclusively in the “rest of the world”. Anton’s statement
cannot be interpreted without (implicit) translations between LT and LO.
Fig. 16.4 Anton’s

statement rationally
reconstructed
326 U. Schürmann
16.4 Conclusion and Outlook
Against the background of the syntactic view on theories and models and its critique
by the adherents of the semantic view of theory building, mainstream modelling
cycles and their inherent epistemological assumptions about the relation between
mathematics and reality have been problematised. The goal of the chapter is to show
that the description of students’ modelling processes cannot rely on a simple separa-
tion between mathematics and reality. The syntactic view, as offered by Carnap,
indicates that distinguishing between the theoretical and observational side of a
language can be helpful in capturing the translation processes of students that take
place when mental models are used to interpret pure mathematical terms, and vice
versa, to interpret the empirical part of a language through the means of mathematics.
Based on a single case study, it was shown that the twofold separation between
LT and LO and the connection via c-rules—in combination with Toulmin’s scheme—
provides a methodological tool to investigate students’ translations between math-
ematics understood as a theoretical language and everyday language and the
empirical use of mathematical terms contained therein. In detail, this attempt allows
us to reconstruct also those more implicit translation steps that are necessary to
explain subsequent explicit utterances and that would remain hidden against the
background of mainstream modelling cycles.
To give an outlook: While this brief chapter has paid attention to the multiple
translations between the theoretical and empirical sides of a language used in mod-
elling processes, the connection of o-terms with real-world phenomena was omitted
to a large extent. In order to get a comprehensive picture of all the translations tak-
ing place in modelling processes, this connection needs to be described and prob-
lematised in more detail. Follow-up questions arise when not only the epistemological
and ontological aspects but also constructive aspects of mathematical modelling are
considered. Here, questions may arise concerning the design of textbook tasks to
promote students’ modelling skills, the teaching of adequate models for proper con-
nection between pure mathematical terms and everyday language, and whether and
what meta-knowledge about mathematical modelling should be taught in the class.
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Chapter 17
Education for Sustainable Development
(ESD) in Mathematics Education:
Reconfiguring and Rethinking
the Philosophy of Mathematics
for the Twenty-First Century
Hui-Chuan Li
17.1 Background
The aspect that emphasises a focus on sustainable development to transform educa-

tion is not new, as formal education, for at least the last 50 years, has been chal-
lenged to engage with a range of economic, social, and environmental concerns.
The United Nations (UN) calls for the inclusion of sustainable development into all
areas of teaching and learning can date back to Agenda 21 (UN, 1992). In Agenda
21, it identified four major imperatives to begin the work of Education for Sustainable
Development (ESD): (1) improve basic education, (2) reorient existing education to
address sustainable development, (3) develop public understanding and awareness,
and (4) training (ibid, 1992).
The term ESD has been used internationally and by UNESCO to refer to the
incorporation of information on sustainable development into the curriculum,
information on issues such as climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity,
poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption. Over the past two decades, formal
education systems have begun to take ESD into account as part of their responsibil-
ity (Li & Tsai, 2022). For instance, the international ESD agenda has informed cur-
riculum developments in Australia and Scotland. Sustainability as a cross-curricular
priority was introduced into Australia’s curriculum in 2010. In Scotland, “Learning
for Sustainability (LfS) [is] cross-cutting themes in Scotland’s CfE [Curriculum for
Excellence] which provides an overarching philosophical, pedagogical and practi-
cal framework for embedding ESD in the school curriculum” (Bamber et al., 2016,
p. 5). LfS as a core component of teachers’ professional standards has been
H.-C. Li (*)
Moray House School of Education and Sport University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
e-mail: huichuan.li@ed.ac.uk
332 H.-C. Li
embedded at all levels of Scottish Education since 2012 in response to UNESCO’s

call for action.
The Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD, which ran from 2015 to 2019,
deployed a two-fold approach to multiply and to scale up the ESD action:
1. To reorient education and learning so that everyone has the opportunity to
acquire the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that empower them to
contribute to sustainable development.
2. To strengthen education and learning in all agendas, programmes and activities
that promote sustainable development (UNESCO, 2018).
In 2015, all the UN member states have approved the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development. This Agenda is an ambitious plan that sets out for countries, the UN
system, and all other actors to stimulate action over the period 2016 to 2030. It
consists of 17 interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), further
broken down into 169 targets, to be met by 2030 with the intention of achieving
inclusive, people-centred, and sustainable development with no one left behind. The
concept of ESD has also brought a new focus to education policy and practice, often
referred to as adjectival education, for example, development education, global
citizenship education, peace education, environmental education, and climate
change education (Evans, 2019).
The overarching goal of ESD is to integrate an awareness of sustainable develop-
ment issues into all aspects of education so that students are empowered to make
informed decisions in their daily lives. In the 2030 Agenda for sustainable develop-
ment (UN, 2015), it stipulates that by 2030 all learners must:
Acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including
among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles,
human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global
citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable
development. (p.19)
How can mathematics education help learners of all ages to respond to sustain-
able development challenges, to lead healthy lives, to nurture sustainable liveli-
hoods, and to achieve human fulfilment for all? The answer is not straightforward
because moving toward a mathematics education that incorporates ESD requires a
paradigm shift in the philosophy of mathematics in general (Ernest, 2018;
Skovsmose, 2019) and in the objective of mathematics education in particular
(Gellert et al., 2018; Lyons et al., 2003). Without a philosophy for incorporating
ESD into mathematics education, it is not reasonable to expect teachers to appreci-
ate that they—in addition to teaching the subject—also have a responsibility to
provide students with opportunities to apply newly gained subject matter expertise
to the wider societal, ecological, equity, and economic issues that they encounter
outside the classroom.
Therefore, this chapter first will review the current state of ESD in mathematics
education. Second, it will look at philosophical theories that have been developed to
explain the meaning of mathematics with respect to what mathematics is and what
17 Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Mathematics Education… 333
it means to understand mathematics. Third, it will discuss issues about equity and
social justice in mathematics education. Fourth, it will talk about interdisciplinary
learning and STEM education and draw attention to the question of whether the
existing philosophical views of mathematics can be applied to understand the role
of mathematics in interdisciplinary learning and/or STEM education. Finally, it will
call for reconfiguring and rethinking the philosophy of mathematics for the twenty-
first century, followed by a concluding remark.
17.2 Current State of Education for Sustainable

Development in Mathematics Education
We live in the dawning of the information age, and we must ask what set of skills
will be most appropriate for the twenty-first century and beyond. As the complexity
of daily life increases, the balance shifts in favour of skills such as critical and
creative thinking. As our social interactions become more diverse, globalised, and
virtual, the balance shifts increasingly in favour of collaboration and communication.
Moreover, we live during an emerging climate crisis, one which has led to a growing
demand for us to attend to the problems of ecological sustainability. ESD, as defined
by UNESCO, emphasises students’ engagement in discussion, analysis, and the
application of learning and knowledge through interdisciplinary activities (Laurie
et al., 2016). It mandates the use of participatory, interdisciplinary teaching and
learning methods. The objective is to promote competencies such as critical
thinking, imagining future scenarios and making decisions in a collaborative way,
with the aim of empowering learners to take informed decisions and responsible
actions for environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society, for present
and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity (UNESCO, 2012).
While there is general agreement on the benefits of a sustainable mathematic
education (e.g. Renert, 2011), there is a lack of clarity on what it is or what it looks
like in the twenty-first century (Gellert, 2011; Li & Tsai, 2022; Petocz & Reid,
2003). Research has reported that incorporating ESD into mathematics education is
proving difficult because lessons that involve sustainable development discussion
and interdisciplinary activities are time-consuming and they can be challenging to
teach, even for experienced teachers (Li & Tsai, 2022). In addition, the widespread
interest in ESD has led to different terms and concepts being used to express the
idea of sustainable development in students’ learning. Researchers across a wide
range of subjects (including mathematics) understand the concept of ESD in the
curriculum in a variety of different ways (Petocz & Reid, 2003). The integration of
ESD into the teaching and learning of mathematics is, however, more controversial—
for example, ESD integration is especially problematic given that the UNESCO
definition includes objectives whose implementation is the subject of contentious
political debate, objectives such as the reduction of poverty and the establishment of
equity and social justice.
334 H.-C. Li
ESD, as defined by UNESCO, is an interdisciplinary approach to learning and

teaching that develops students’ knowledge in collaborative and novel ways with
the aim of empowering them to see sustainable development as a way of thinking
about the world, as a way of guiding their actions and decision-making processes—
as far as ESD is concerned, the development of proficiency in mathematics is not the
objective. However, in school mathematics, national curriculum assessments play a
powerful role in providing criterion measures of attainment for both students and
schools, and results are often used by policymakers for school accountability
purposes (e.g. Department of Education, 2020). Moreover, enhancing academic
outcomes by “teaching to the test” in mathematics education has become an
increasingly common phenomenon in many education systems across the world
(Tsai & Li, 2017).
Yaro et al. (2020) state that the teachers in their project would discount or down-
play the mathematical tasks for peace and sustainability, as they viewed those tasks
“as outside the realm of formal school sanctioned activities” (p.227). Indeed, teach-
ers may be concerned by the social justice component of ESD, by the requirement
to pursue an interdisciplinary approach rather than a teacher-centred approach, by
the need to gain subject matter expertise in subjects other than mathematics, and by
the necessity of omitting some existing material from the current mathematics cur-
riculum if time constraints are to be satisfied. The disparity between the formal
school curriculum and ESD approaches invites me to examine whether a sustainable
mathematics education is acceptable, or is indeed necessary, and, perhaps, to rethink
what a vision for mathematics education should be in the twenty-first century.
How might mathematics contribute to our understanding of, and our responses
to, sustainable development challenges? Earlier, Gellert (2011) calls for “new
mathematics to improve our perception, control and regulation of the problematic
situation” (p.20). More recently, Barwell and Hauge (2021) point out that critical
mathematics education research has paid little attention to questions of environmental
sustainability and contend:
[F]or mathematics education to adequately address issues like climate change, ideas from
critical mathematics education need to be supplemented with a theorisation of the nature of
science and its role in society in the context of complex environmental problems such as the
threat of climate change. (p.169)
Therefore, as a starting point for thinking about the connection between mathe-
matics and climate change, Barwell and Hauge propose a set of principles for teach-
ing mathematics in the context of climate change based on critical mathematics
education and on the theory of post-normal science, as shown in Table 17.1.
Li and Tsai (2022) point out that, at present, the integration of ESD into mathe-
matics education is the exception rather than the rule and suggest that one reason for
this hesitancy is that there are no existing philosophic theories for doing so, as ESD
integration would require a redefinition of the scope of mathematics. It is thus worth
revisiting the questions of what mathematics is and what it means to understand
mathematics.
Table 17.1 Principles for teaching mathematics in the context of climate change
Forms of authenticity Students should have opportunities to use problems about climate
change that students find relevant in their lives
Students should have opportunities to work with real data as much as
possible
Students’ own ideas and values should have a central role
Students should have opportunities to engage in meaningful debate
relating to climate change
Forms of participation Students should participate in mathematics
Students should actively participate in their classrooms
Students should actively participate in their communities
Students should actively engage with and participate in public debate
Reflecting on and with Students should have opportunities to reflect on how mathematics is
mathematics useful
Students should have opportunities to reflect on the limits of
mathematics
Students should consider the role of values in mathematics
Adapted from Barwell and Hauge (2021), p.177
17.3 What Mathematics Is and What It Means

to Understand Mathematics
What is mathematics? It is hard to answer this question since there are a variety of
philosophical theories that have been developed to explain the meaning of
mathematics with respect to what mathematics is—for example, logicism,
intuitionism, formalism, Platonism, constructivism, and Husserlian phenomenology.
To logicists, mathematics, or part of it, is essentially logic (Russell, 1902). However,
intuitionists contend that, rather than logic, mathematics should be defined as a
mental activity (Snapper, 1979). For formalists, the subject matter of mathematics
is its symbols, which are neither of logic nor of intuition (Giaquinto, 2002).
Platonism is based on the idea that mathematics is “conceived of as a pure body of
knowledge, independent of its environment, and value- free” (Renert, 2011, p.20).
From the Platonist perspective, mathematics holds the key to certain, indubitable
knowledge. However, the certainty of Platonism has been questioned by a number
of mathematicians and philosophers (Ernest, 1991, 2021; Zakaria & Iksan, 2007).
For example, social constructivists have argued that mathematics is the theory of
form and structure that arises within language and mathematical applications play
an integral role in human social life.
Husserlian phenomenologists consider mathematical experience a constitutional
explanation that analyses the ideal structures involved in our meaningful experience
of the world. Hartimo (2006) highlights that “to Husserl, investigating the origin of
the concepts of number and multiplicity means giving a detailed description of the
related concrete phenomena and the process of abstraction from the concrete
phenomena” (p.329). Phenomenologists in mathematics education do not attempt to
start from individual components and posit any further entities but analyse the
perception for conscious representation of a spatiotemporal world. In Husserl’s The
336 H.-C. Li
Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology published by

the Cambridge University Press (Moran, 2012), Husserl is concerned over how the
scientific application of formal mathematics had changed the very conception of
modernity and argues that the world for us all should be one that allows for mutual
understanding, for action, and for the development of communicative rationality.
Ernest (2020) asserts that the philosophy of mathematics has largely concerned
itself with pure mathematics, although, in recent years, it has started to focus on the
issues associated with applied mathematics. Indeed, some researchers, such as
Hardy (1967), focus on pure mathematics, an abstract neutral subject that has value
independent of possible applications. However, others, such as Skovsmose (2019),
have focused on applied mathematics and the impact that mathematics has on
human life. Pure mathematics consists of abstract mathematical objects and is
essentially an art, a creative process, one in which its learners have to envisage what
putative sequence of steps might lead from a set of premises to a conclusion—
deductive reasoning plays a role equivalent to the artist’s paintbrush. Nevertheless,
this perspective, influenced by Platonism, considers neither the methods used to
teach mathematics nor the role of mathematics in modelling physical, environmental,
and ecological processes (Li & Tsai, 2022). For example, almost everything taught
in school mathematics—from arithmetic to algebra, to differential calculus—
involves to some extent the use of deductive reasoning, a skill that is useful for
decision-making in general. However, too often the focus is on memorising the
steps required to solve a particular class of problems—without an appreciation of
the modelling of real-world scenarios.
Skovsmose (2019) offers a performative perspective on the philosophy of math-
ematics. Ravn and Skovsmose (2019) have developed the position that mathematics
is performative in the sense that its adoption and application by human beings can
inform decision-making, leading to altered political priorities and transformed
social realities. The mathematical modelling of real-world scenarios encourages a
careful consideration of what factors are relevant and which ones are more or less
important—it discourages decision-making driven by emotion and impulsive,
instinctive patterns of thought. The use of mathematical modelling and measure-
ment is performative, and through its application, mathematics plays an integral role
in human social life (Ernest, 2020; Jankvist & Niss, 2020; Hagena, 2015; Skovsmose,
2019). Nevertheless, such an integral role of mathematics in the society has not yet
been widely accepted. For example, in a TV show, a mathematician was asked:
“What is the point of your practice?” and “What are your social responsibilities?”.
The mathematician answered:
The point of mathematics is to pursue mathematical truth. This is truth about the perfect
world of mathematical objects, which are timeless, perfect and exist in their own realm,
untouched by material changes and decay. The truth we pursue can be exquisitely beautiful,
but we are merciless in our rigour and only the most robust proofs can be accepted as
demonstrating the truth of our results. Our responsibility is to pursue mathematical
knowledge and beauty beyond all earthly bounds, knowing that we enrich human culture
inestimably. Although our responsibilities end with the pursuit of mathematics for its own
sake, it often turns out that the most abstract theories have surprising and very fruitful
applications in science, technology and in modelling the physical world. But this is a happy
accident, discovered only after we have revealed the truth. We pursue truth and beauty, but
the only good we have to worry about is being good mathematicians. (cited from Ernest,
2021, p.3)
Ernest (2021) prompted by the mathematician’s interview above and raised ques-
tions as to “Does mathematics only have to concern itself with truth and beauty and
not with the good of humanity in a broader sense? Has mathematics no social
responsibilities, no debt to the society that nurtures and funds it? Is ethics irrelevant
to pure mathematics, as many mathematicians think?” (p.3). Ernest’s questions
draw my attention to the important question of what social responsibilities
mathematics should have in the society, which I will discuss in more detail below.
17.4 Equity, Social Justice, and Mathematics Education
Equity and social justice are core components of ESD. However, as Naresh and
Kasmer (2018) argue, “mathematics in school settings is mostly perceived and
presented as an elite body of knowledge stripped of its rich social, cultural, and
historical connections” (p.309). Berry (2018) used an analysis-critical race theory
as a lens to critically examine policies and reforms in mathematics education in the
US over the past few decades and concluded:
Economic, technological, and security interests were, and continue to be, drivers of many
policies and reforms. These policies and reforms situated mathematics education in a
nationalistic position of being color-blind, in a context where race, racism, conditions, and
contexts do not matter […]. Despite the evidence that racism and marginalization exist in
schools and communities, many still adhere to the belief that color-blind policies and
pedagogical practices will best serve all students. (p.16)
A recent report published in 2018 by the Social Mobility Commission in the UK

revealed that “the attainment gap [in mathematics] widens as disadvantaged children
fall further behind” (Social Mobility Commission, 2018, p.6). Research on the links
between post-16 students’ earnings progression and social and economic
development has shown consistently that a disproportionately high number of
disadvantaged students experience poor earnings progression (e.g. Department for
Education, 2018). This inequality is concerning, especially as it can increase the
risk of violent conflict (Montacute, 2020; Poverty Analysis Discussion Group,
2012). The Smith review published in 2017 by the Department of Education in
England has confirmed that mathematics has a uniquely privileged status in society
which has a big impact on future earnings:
There is strong demand for mathematical and quantitative skills in the labour market at all
levels […] Adults with basic numeracy skills earn higher wages and are more likely to be
employed than those who fail to master basic quantitative skills. Higher levels of
achievement in mathematics are associated with higher earnings for individuals and higher
productivity. (Smith, 2017, p.6)
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Questions arise as to “whether mathematics education contributes to social injus-

tices and whether equity in mathematics education is an economic necessity or a
moral obligation” (Berry, 2018, p.5). Gutiérrez (2013) argues that mathematics and
mathematics teaching is political, including the curriculum we choose, the activities
we assign, and the education systems we organise. In line with Gutiérrez (2013), I
also argue that school mathematics is political. It places people in socially valued
mathematical rationalities and forms of knowing and consequently decides the idea
of what mathematics is and how people might relate to it (or not). Mathematics
becomes an important element of larger processes of selection of people that school-
ing operates in society (Valero, 2018). In addition, policies and reforms in mathe-
matics education have been largely motivated by the desire to compete in a global
economy, which also reinforces the privileged status of mathematics in society and
promotes a labour market that would only benefit a select few.
Tsai and Li (2017) note that “curriculum reforms have been one of the most com-
mon approaches adopted by policy makers when trying to promote change and
improvement in school mathematics programs” (p.1264). This may thus lead to the
situation in that the mathematics content that was taught, and the methods used to
teach in schools were closely connected to standardised tests. Partly because of this,
there would be little/no scope for teachers to introduce concepts/topics that are not
examined in the standardised tests in school—for example, Schoenfeld and
Kilpatrick (2013) argue that the likelihood of implementing inquiry-based
curriculum in the US was small due to the considerations of preparing students for
particular tests in the different states.
In mathematics education, the concept of increasing equity within mathematics
education is not new. As called by Gutstein et al. (2005), “each of us has a
responsibility to both think about and act on issues of equity” (p.98). Ernest (2021)
also contends that ethics is widely perceived as irrelevant in mathematics. He
examines the role and need for ethics in mathematical practice from some ethically
sensitive areas and problematic categories with respect to mathematics and its
applications, and then concludes that “we mathematicians have a vital role to play
in keeping governments and corporations ethical and honest” (ibid, p.34). In recent
years, the discourses in combating injustices and creating a just society have been
working to move mathematics education research “from equity as choice to equity
as an intentional collective professional responsibility” (Aguirre et al., 2017, p.128).
Aguirre et al. (2017) identify four political acts that illustrate the essential role of
equity as an explicit responsibility of mathematics education researchers. They are
as follows: (1) enhance mathematics education research with an equity lens, (2)
acquire the knowledge necessary to do genuine equity work, (3) challenge the false
dichotomy between mathematics and equity, and (4) expand the view of what counts
as “mathematics”.
In ESD, it aims to draw attention to the purpose of the world’s education and
moves the aim of education from simply a matter of training people for the global
economy to engage citizens in and for society. As Khan (2014) suggests, “it [ESD]
supports the acquisition of knowledge to understand our complex world; the
development of interdisciplinary understanding, critical thinking and action skills to
address these challenges with sustainable solutions” (p.11). Thus, ESD calls for an
interdisciplinary approach and a reorienting of the existing disciplines and
pedagogies to motivate people to “become proactive contributors to a more just,
peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world” (UNESCO, 2014, p.15).
Therefore, in the next section, I will look at research on interdisciplinary learning
and STEM education in mathematics education, and then draw attention to the
question of whether the existing philosophical views of mathematics can be applied
to understand the role of mathematics in interdisciplinary learning.
17.5 Interdisciplinary Learning, STEM Education,

and Mathematics Education
In mathematics education, as Williams et al. (2016) note, interdisciplinary learning

is “a relatively new field of research in mathematics education, but one that is
becoming increasingly prominent internationally because of the political agenda
around Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)” (p.1). Over
the past few decades, studies have highlighted the benefits of interdisciplinary
STEM learning for transferring what students learn, for improving problem-solving
abilities, for developing STEM knowledge in more flexible and novel ways, and for
promoting a better understanding of STEM ideas in real-life situations (e.g. Hobbs
et al., 2019; Nakakoji & Wilson, 2018; Saavedra & Opfer, 2012; Williams et al.,
2016). Saavedra and Opfer (2012) state:
Students must apply the skills and knowledge they gain in one discipline to another and
what they learn in school to other areas of their lives. A common theme is that ordinary
instruction doesn’t prepare learners well to transfer what they learn, but explicit attention to
the challenges of transfer can cultivate it. (p.10)
It is also worth mentioning that there is an increasing awareness of out-of-school,

university-led programme value in enhancing student interest and understanding of
STEM and its applications (Baran et al. 2019). Jensen and Sjaastad (2013) argue
that secondary school students who had opportunities to attend out-of-school STEM
programmes at local universities or further education colleges helped to increase
their awareness of STEM careers and could picture themselves as scientists. To
further illustrate the role that universities can play in promoting interdisciplinary
STEM learning for secondary school students, in the following, I will describe some
preliminary findings from a pilot study of my own STEM and Sustainability
(STEMS) project for students (ages 15–18) in Scotland.
In this STEMS project, the contents of all of the workshops were designed by me
and colleagues at my university, in discussion with the workshop instructors before
implementing each of the workshops. All the workshops were conducted on
Saturdays at a university. Students volunteered to attend this project. There were no
selection criteria in recruiting workshop participants, but priority was given to
students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The results of the student pre- and
340 H.-C. Li
post-project questionnaires indicated that there were statistically significant differ-

ences in students’ understanding of sustainability and in their attitudes towards
STEM subjects after they attended the project, with a higher mean score in the post-
project questionnaire. Table 17.2 shows the main themes and activities of the work-
shops. Examples of student feedback on each activity are also presented.
Due to the scope of this chapter, I will not describe each of the workshop activi-
ties here, but it is worth discussing some students’ feedback on this workshop activ-
ity: “capture-mark-recapture discussion and card game”. The activity consisted of
(1) discussing biodiversity and the future of species issues, (2) understanding the
proportion concept for the capture-mark-recapture method, (3) considering
statistical assumptions for the capture-mark-recapture method (e.g. why is the result
Table 17.2 The main themes and activities of the workshops and student feedback
Theme Main activity Examples of student feedback
Theme 1 The volume of life Global goal string “All goals are connected and everything
on Earth – Biodiversity activity impacts one another”
Capture-mark-recapture “It was good to learn about sampling
discussion and card techniques and its practical use and its
game pros and cons depending on its use in
Carbon cycle game different situations”
“It was a fun and smart way to teach
the carbon cycle”
Theme 2 A renewable, Bioenergy crossword “I enjoyed crossword most as I was
biodegradable game good as it”
fuel – Biodiesel Controversial “A good debate. [it’s] interesting and
discussion: encouraged me to think about the topic
Jatropha – a solution in detail
or a false hope? “Recapped my knowledge of drawing
Using graphs to graphs – I further developed my
represent and interpret knowledge of Jatropha and biodiesel”
biodiesel production
Theme 3 A clean source of SDG 7 affordable and “Clean energy is important as we need
renewable energy – wind clean energy: why it to think about the effects and impact on
power matters? the world because of it”
Benefits and drawbacks “Clean source of power, but it can
of offshore wind farms ‘ruin’ landscapes and affect
Wind turbines: how biodiversity”
many blades experiment “It allowed me to problem solving and
learn about the physics behind the wind
power generation methods”
Theme 4 Mathematics and Climate changes art “Recalled climate changes knowledge,
climate changes – what the gallery but don’t like drawing”
mathematics is telling us How high school “I learnt more about mathematical
mathematics gives concepts and know climate changing is
insights into climate happening at a faster rate than
changes predicted”
Relay game: what “Revisited past workshops to revise
students have learned knowledge – team building games are
from the workshops fun”
unlikely to be exactly true?), and (4) using the card game to help students know how
to do the capture-mark-recapture method. Two examples of student feedback on the
activity that were collected from their post-workshop interviews are presented as
follows:
I was surprised to know that it [the answer] is unlikely to be exactly true. I thought the
maths would always give you the correct answer.
The only real…real understanding I had of sustainability before was from a biology lesson
years ago. This [Capture-Mark-Recapture discussion and card game] really helped me to
understand it and also engage with it with some practical exercises and ideas which I found
very interesting and enjoyable.
From the student feedback above, it shows that the practical exercises (e.g. card
games) and interdisciplinary approaches had really helped them to understand
sustainability, although they had been taught about it in their biology lesson before.
The student feedback above also made a reference to “I thought that maths would
always give you the correct answer”. While it is not surprising that students were
not aware of the uncertainty of mathematics, the results of the student interviews
suggested that, partly because little statistics was taught to them or statistical
knowledge was something that was crammed into their heads in school mathematics,
they did not understand the concept that underlies the operation when performing
the capture-mark-recapture method, even those who were able successfully to
perform the operation. It is also worth mentioning here that, while statistical data is
presented in the news on a daily basis, error bars around the data points are rarely
included on the grounds that most people would not understand their significance.
Similarly, when a change in some quantity—be it a car accident or the COVID case
rate—is reported, there is no accompanying statement as to whether the change is
statistically significant on the grounds that most people would not understand the
concept. It may therefore be difficult for people to come to appreciate that
measurement without an associated uncertainty is often of little value.
As I have mentioned earlier, in line with other researchers (e.g. Gutiérrez, 2013),
school mathematics is political. Thus, in typical school mathematics, certain
branches of mathematics are overrepresented (e.g. algebra) and others
underrepresented (e.g. approximation, statistics, probability, discrete mathematics,
and fractal mathematics). Take approximation and discrete mathematics as
examples; when mathematics is applied to solve real-world problems, it invariably
involves the use of approximation. In addition, discrete mathematics gives
approximations for the size of some measurements. Students should come to
understand that approximations produce inexact results and sometimes unreliable
results. Arguably, discrete mathematics and approximation should be taught as a
part of mathematics. Regarding statistical teaching in schools, Batanero et al. (2011)
argue that “many teachers unconsciously share a variety of difficulties and
misconceptions with their students with respect to fundamental statistical ideas”
(p.409) because they do not actually teach much statistics and rarely use statistics to
analyse data.
342 H.-C. Li
This is cause for concern as, if students in their education were routinely taught
some basic statistics, then news feeds would be enhanced and students would have
the capacity to make informed, data-driven decisions—and, more importantly, they
would develop a readiness to question the validity of data-based assertions
unaccompanied by a statistical justification. There is little doubt that most topics in
schools help to teach deductive and inductive reasoning. However, it is arguable that
the typical school-based mathematics curriculum tends to view students’ learning
from the narrow sense of the scores achieved, rather than from the standpoint of
educational development such as transfer of learning. It is therefore not surprising
that mathematics teaching has often been criticised for being teacher-centred,
content-oriented, and academic-driven (e.g. Petocz & Reid, 2003) and students
nowadays are highly dependent and passive and have difficulty in constructing
meaning and understanding from their learning.
Like school mathematics, I also argue that STEM education is political too. As
Williams et al. (2016) describe, “in almost all countries now politicians see education
in terms of preparation of a workforce for a competitive industrial sector, and STEM
is seen as the route to more value-adding industries, especially in knowledge
economies” (p.1).
There is general agreement among the majority of the general public that the
development of mathematical skills plays an essential role in helping the younger
generations function effectively in today’s technological society and, hence, that the
acquisition of mathematical skills contributes to economic growth and prosperity—
for example, the deductive reasoning skills developed by solving mathematical
equations are essential when it comes to writing and debugging computer programs.
However, several mathematics researchers have raised concerns that this focus on
using mathematics for problem-solving is too narrow (e.g. Berry, 2018; Ernest,
2020; Gellert, 2011, Gutstein, 2012, Martin, 2015, Skovsmose, 2019).
Gellert (2011) contends that “thinking of mathematics only as a powerful tool for
solving economic problems is a truncated conception of mathematics-in-society”
(p.20). Swanson (2019) points out that “a common theme which emerges from the
case studies is that of a potential for mathematics to disappear, or to become a mere
tool, within such [STEM] activities” (p.157). The National Council of Supervisors
of Mathematics (NCSM) and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
in the US have also highlighted that although it is recognised that all the subjects
within the STEM education are important, it is necessary to affirm “the essential
role of a strong foundation in mathematics as the centre of any STEM education
program” (NCSM & NCTM, 2018, p.1).
A question arises as to whether the existing philosophical views of mathematics
can be applied to understand the role of mathematics in interdisciplinary learning.
This question remains unanswered. It is thus important for us to think about how
mathematics interrelates with the other disciplines and contexts involved in the
context of interdisciplinary learning. In particular, if ESD is to be integrated into
mathematics education, we need a new philosophy to address questions as to what
mathematics can help people gain insights into the role that mathematics plays in
shaping human society and how mathematics can help people take up sustainable
development challenges.
17.6 A Call for Reconfiguring and Rethinking the Philosophy

of Mathematics for the Twenty-First Century
How sustainable is mathematics? It is still unclear—when it comes to classroom

practice—what ESD in mathematics education should look like in the twenty-first
century. As argued by Barwell (2018), “there has been little sustained mathematics
education research” (p.156). My review of ESD-related studies has confirmed these
findings: I found that the number of studies in ESD relating to mathematics in
general, and to mathematics education in particular, is few and disproportionate to
the number of studies that document problems with its implementation—problems
for which solutions are needed urgently. Over the past few decades, while there has
been substantial preparatory work when it comes to adapting ESD for disparate
subjects and education systems (Laurie et al., 2016), there has been limited progress
when it comes to embedding such work within school curricula (Hunt et al., 2011;
Summers, 2013). Furthermore, research shows that the quantity and quality of ESD
provision in teacher education have been “patchy” (Bamber et al., 2016).
In the field of mathematics and mathematics education, it is widely accepted that
pure mathematics is neutral and value-free; however, the situation becomes more
nuanced once mathematics is applied to real-world scenarios. Ernest (2020) notes
that “one of the traditional problems of the philosophy of mathematics is the
question of how wholly abstract mathematics can have any effect on the world”
(p.79). As discussed in previous sections, traditionally, mathematics was taught as a
static body of knowledge and unquestionable truth. However, it has in the last
century been questioned that there can be no complete provable body of mathematical
knowledge, no unification of what is provable and what is true (e.g. Gödel’s
incompleteness theorem). It is difficult to understand how the uncertainty of
mathematics has surfaced in the philosophy of mathematics education.
In Husserl’s later work, he claims that his idea of life-world can be used as a
fundamental and novel phenomenon previously invisible to the sciences. Husserl
insists:
There is a specific and entirely new science of the life-world itself [..] that would, among
other things, offer a new basis for grounding the natural and human sciences. There never
has been such an investigation of the lifeworld as subsoil (Untergrund) for all forms of
theoretical truth […] The life-world demands a different type of investigation that goes
beyond the usual scientific treatment of the natural or human world. It must be descriptive
of the life-world in its own terms, bracketing conceptions intruding from the natural and
cultural sciences, and identifying the ‘types’ (Type) and ‘levels’ (Stufe) that belong to it
(cited from Moran, 2012, p.223)
In line with Husserl’s idea of the life-world, I also argue that there is clearly a
need to demand a different type of investigation that goes beyond the existing
philosophies of mathematics and mathematics education so that it can align more
closely with twenty-first--century learning priorities.
In the previous section, I have shown that the interdisciplinary ESD approaches
can assist the sustainable development movement by cultivating in students the
344 H.-C. Li
skills needed in mathematics as well as across different subjects/disciplines to make

informed judgments about sustainable development when faced with contradictory
information, data, and opinions. I believe that the integration of ESD into
mathematics education has the potential to make a significant contribution to the
sustainable development movement. To this end, I argue that the philosophy of
mathematics and mathematics education needs to be reconfigured and re-envisioned
so as to accommodate social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Topics that
would help students to acquire relevant knowledge, to practice critical thinking, to
manage uncertainty, and to act in a measured and responsible manner when faced
with a pending crisis should also be included in school mathematics, with the aim
of better preparing students to address the global issues that they will face during
their lifetimes.
17.7 Concluding Marks
This chapter by no means claims to be a fully comprehensive study of how the phi-
losophy of mathematics and mathematics education should be reconfigured or re-
envisioned in order to appropriately integrate the relevant aspects of ESD into
mathematics and mathematics education. However, its discussions may offer
relevant information on rethinking the existing philosophies to respond to a growing
demand to integrate ESD into mathematics teaching and learning.
As I have discussed in previous sections—the “teaching to the test” culture in
mathematics education, the dominant philosophy of pure mathematics and the
issues in mathematics education regarding equity, social justice and interdisciplinary
learning—all of which have shown that the incorporation of ESD, as defined by
UNESCO, into mathematics education is far from simple. Arguably, if we are to
meet the current sustainable development challenges, we must broaden the focus
and find a new philosophy of mathematics to incorporate ESD into mathematics
education.
Over the past two decades, research has only started to address the fundamental
questions facing the incorporation of ESD into mathematics teaching and learning.
The work is still in progress, and there is certainly still much work to be done. This
chapter may only be one amongst several attempts to achieve this goal. More
research will, no doubt, contribute further to the understanding of this highly
complex and demanding aspect of mathematics education and to the routine teaching
of ESD within mathematics classrooms. Of course, more research is also needed to
focus on the critical thinking and problem-solving skills involved in mathematical
modelling and measurement, on how mathematics is applied within other disciplines,
and on how mathematics provides a lingua franca that supports effective, ethical
communication between disparate communities across the world.
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Part IV
Philosophy of Mathematics Education
in Diverse Perspectives, Cultures,
and Environments
Chapter 18
Asé O’u Toryba ‘Ara Îabi’õnduara!
Antonio Miguel, Elizabeth Gomes Souza, and Carolina Tamayo Osorio
18.1 Introduction
In this chapter, we carry out a therapeutic-grammatical investigation of the philo-

sophical problem related to the belief in the supposed uniqueness and universality
of Western logical-formal mathematics and the main philosophical arguments that
support it, with the purpose of deconstructing it based on a decolonial counter-
argument. This counter-argument does not claim to constitute a new philosophy of
mathematics that can support a new perspective of the philosophy of mathematics
education, it does give visibility, in general terms, to a therapeutic-decolonial way
of educating and of educating oneself mathematically in school, through the non-
disciplinary problematization of algorithmic cultural practices historically invented
as adequate responses to normative social problems emerging in different forms of
life. In this sense, such algorithmic-normative practices can be seen as mathematical
language games,1 in Wittgenstein’s sense.
1
Wittgenstein (2017, § 7) coined the expression “language games” to refer to the totality of lan-
guage and the activities intertwined with it, proposing to redirect the words from their metaphysi-
cal use to their everyday use. The expression language-game seeks to highlight, with the word
“game,” the importance of language praxis, that is, it seeks to highlight language as a theatrical and
performative practice, and, with this, the multiplicity of activities in which the language is inserted.
Wittgenstein’s deconstructionist, nondogmatic, and non-essentialist therapeutic philosophizing
A. Miguel (*)
State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil
E. G. Souza
University of Pará, Belém, Pará, Brazil
C. Tamayo Osorio
Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
e-mail: carolinatamayo@ufmg.br
352 A. Miguel et al.
This decolonial counter-argument highlights the claim that such practices and
the ways in which they affect different forms of life in the contemporary world
should be the focus of therapeutic problematizations of a school mathematics
education that intends to be decolonial. In line with Miguel and Tamayo (2020,
p. 5), we are seeing and wanting to explore here a decolonial aspect in the therapeutic
attitude,
not only because this attitude is being practiced here by us to deconstruct discourses and
practices that contemporary decolonial discourse sees as colonizers, but also because we
are seeing its decolonizing aspect as the purpose that guides our way of practicing it.
Methodologically referenced by the works of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig

Wittgenstein, the therapeutic-grammatical investigation that we present here is
characterized through a neither this/nor that, because it cannot be seen either as a
philosophical investigation guided by a general and prescriptive scientific method –
empirical-verificationist or theoretical-logical-fundamentalist – nor as proceeding
in an irrational and anarchic way, since it does not allow itself to be guided either by
a previously defined method, nor by a universal method that could be later described
and detached to be applied in other problems. “There is not a single philosophical
method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were”
(Wittgenstein, 2009, § 133).
Each therapeutic investigation – even when it uses sources or data directly col-
lected in field research, which is not the case here – invents its own ethical-aesthetic
style of philosophizing and does not use such sources or data to attest or support a
supposed final thesis on the investigated problem to be defended by the researcher-
therapist. In fact, the ethical-aesthetic style of Wittgenstein’s philosophizing makes
the reader co-responsible for the developments generated by reading his work. It is
Wittgenstein himself who expresses this desire, in the following way, in the preface
to Philosophical Investigations: “I should not like my writing to spare other people
the trouble of thinking. But if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his
own” (Wittgenstein, 2009, Preface, p. 4e).
Another important point to be highlighted here is that a therapeutic-grammatical
investigation of a philosophical problem has nothing to do with an investigation of
a psychological nature, since it operates on the “grammars” – that is, on the set of
does not allow itself to be categorically defined even one of the key terms of his philosophizing,
namely, the expression “language games.” However, instead of a categorical definition, Wittgenstein
provides an ostensive definition, that is, numerous examples of language games, as in passage 23
of the Philosophical Investigations: “[…] The word “language-game” is used here to emphasize
the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life. Consider the variety
of language-games in the following examples, and in others: Giving orders, and acting on them;
Describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements; Constructing an object from a
description (a drawing); Reporting an event; Speculating about the event; Forming and testing a
hypothesis; Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams; Making up a story; and
reading one; Acting in a play; Singing rounds; Guessing riddles; Cracking a joke; telling one;
Solving a problem in applied arithmetic; Translating from one language into another; Requesting;
thanking; cursing; greeting; praying […].”
18 Asé O’u Toryba ‘Ara Îabi’õnduara! 353
guiding rules – of the different language games made public (the different “public
philosophies,” in Paul Ernest’s sense) in the field of scientific-academic activities.
It is therefore necessary to warn readers about the analogies that could be wrongly
established between therapeutic-grammatical investigations and psychotherapies,
whatever their theoretical affiliations, as well as between them and the maieutic
Socratic method in the way it was didactically and cognitively practiced in Plato’s
dialogues, guided by the purpose of “convincing” Socrates’ interlocutors – or rather,
to impose them – about the essential and irrefutable truth of a certain point of view
(thesis) related to the problem in focus.
Even though the written presentation of our therapeutic investigation in the form
of a dialogical-argumentative text can maintain “family resemblances” (Wittgenstein,
2009, § 67) with the philosophical-empirical-fallibilist investigation practiced in the
dialogical-dialectical text of Proofs and Refutations by Imre Lakatos, there is a
subtle and radical difference between both that needs to be highlighted here. The
repeated application of the confident rational method of “prove and refute” triggered
by Lakatos, guided by his paradoxical purpose of “proving” the skeptical thesis that
a mathematical proof never proves what it purports to prove, is in manifest inverse
contrast with our “confident conviction.”
In a “methodologically skeptical” therapeutic investigation – by refusing to
define a method, whether rational or irrational, that can guide it – there is not exactly
a thesis to be proved, defended, verified, or refuted, but only a problem to be better
understood, clarified or, as the case may be, to be dissolved as a problem, through
the decolonial counter-argument, case by case.
The Wittgensteinian therapeutic-grammatical perspective begins from the con-
ception that “philosophy must not interfere in any way with the actual use of lan-
guage, so it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot justify it either. It leaves
everything as it is” (Wittgenstein, 2017, § 124):
Wittgenstein’s writing styles are aphoristic, non-conceptual, polyphonic, and questioning.
This writing profile leads his different readers to different assertions, in a self-responsible
process of understanding his writings. […] A style of philosophizing that deconstructs
images, concepts, conceptions elaborated from a fixed, dogmatic, representational, and
external spectrum to the practice or phenomenon studied. The aphoristic and dialogical way
of conducting this deconstruction calls to look how the practices occur. “Don’t think, but
look”. (Wittgenstein, 2017, § 66), see how the language works? (Souza et al., 2022, p. 278)
By extension, a therapeutic investigation is not driven by the dogmatic purpose

of convincing readers of the reasonableness or truth of a point of view over the
others that are manifested in the debate, nor is there a privileged interlocutor who
had this kind of power.
Finally, therapeutic research, such as the one we carry out here, does not claim
for itself a status of empirical-verificationist or theoretical-logical-fundamentalist
scientificity. This is because, on the one hand, we do not believe that the theoretical
discourses produced in the field of philosophical investigation – for example,
philosophies of mathematics, philosophies of education, and philosophies of
mathematics education – are endowed with the pretentious imperialist power of
grounding, to validate or rectify the effective ways of practicing mathematics and
mathematics education in different fields of human activity, including the field of

school education.
On the other hand, we think that the greater or lesser social and political rele-
vance, credibility, acceptability, effects, and affects of philosophical discourses
reside in their performative powers to modify habits, customs, beliefs, ideologies,
and behaviors, both on a personal and social-institutional level.
Hence, the choice we made to present our philosophical investigation through a
therapeutic-dialogical-problematizing writing endowed, in our view, with
performative power in relation to standard conventional presentations, seen as
“scientifically correct or acceptable” by the scientific-editorial field of the
contemporary academic world. “Hence our choice for what is in front of our vision,
without worrying about what is supposedly hidden. These voices always tell us –
“Look! – Look!” (De Jesus, 2015, p. 52).
We choose six persons will participate in this debate: Oiepé, Mokoi, Mosapyr,
Irundyk, Mbó, and Opá kó mbó. Their names correspond, respectively, to the
numerals one, two, three, four, five, and ten in the ancient Tupi language, today
considered one of the two most important linguistic branches of the hundreds of
different languages currently spoken by indigenous communities in Brazil. Other
remote interlocutors are invited to participate in the debate, or they enter the room
uninvited. They are identified by acronyms formed by the first letters of their names
and surnames.
Although several public and published points of view related to the problem we
investigated have been presented, defended, or refuted by the different face-to-face
or remote interlocutors participating in the debate, none of these points of view –
among others, those of Hogben, Aleksandrov, Lakatos, Perminov, and Raju or even
those of Wittgenstein himself – could be attributed to us as researcher-therapists or
authors of this collective text, which does not mean that each of us, as individual
researchers, did not make different decolonial choices to conduct our research,
teaching and teacher formation activities.
The purpose of a therapeutic-grammatical investigation is the rejection of every
form of dogmatism. Therefore, this is not a text that dogmatically defends a formal-
ist, fallibilist, ethnomathematics, decolonial or any other point of view in relation to
the investigated problem, even though the indigenous interlocutors who discuss this
problem are undoubtedly committed to an anthropophagic-decolonial critique
regarding the belief in the uniqueness and universality of western logical-formal
mathematics and the main philosophical arguments that support it.
It does not, however, prevent them from disagreeing with each other, whether in
relation to various aspects of this criticism or in relation to aspects of a possible
therapeutic-decolonial proposal to educate and to educate oneself mathematically,
at school, through the nondisciplinary problematization of normative cultural
practices. In fact, in our therapeutic-dialogical-problematizing text, we try to take
care as much as possible not to mischaracterize the principles that characterize a
therapeutic-grammatical investigation.
18.2 Therapeutic Debate
Irundyk – I think there is a common belief that has guided Western school mathe-
matics education, namely, to assume as true and, therefore, as potentially applicable
only those propositions that have been logically-deductively proved. It is, therefore,
the value and power attached to logical proof that imparts to the proposition the
status of truth, so that such a belief produces its own picture of the truth of a propo-
sition as always being relative to the deductive system to which it belongs, without
coming into conflict with the others.
Mbó – It’s true! It is this belief that has been the engine of the entire history of
colonizing Western mathematics education…
Mokoi – If the East is, in fact, an invention of the West, as argued by Said (2003),
I think that such a belief could also be extended to the global school mathematics
education, which is nothing but the axiomatized set of lies logico-deductively
proved propositions that European colonizers told us about. This history, therefore,
does not represent us, it only represents them.
Mosapyr – For my part, I think that such a belief is neither Eastern nor Western,
but only colonial. It should no longer be imposed on us by school mathematics
education. After all, as Lakatosian fallibilism has said, a mathematical proof
never proves.
IL (Lakatos, 2015, p. 152) – It has not yet been sufficiently realised that present
mathematical and scientific education is a hotbed of authoritarianism and is the
worst enemy of independent and critical thought. While in mathematics this
authoritarianism follows the deductivist pattern, in science it operates through the
inductivist pattern.
Oiepé – I agree! For Lakatos, a proof can always be refutable through the presen-
tation of local counterexamples – that is, those that refute one or more of its pas-
sages – or global ones, that is, those that refute the proposition itself. And even if a
proof can be rectified, it will be, ad infinitum, open to logical criticism and refutation.
Opá kó mbó – Lakatos’ fallibilism is nothing but an extension of Popperian fal-
libilism as a philosophy of science into the domain of the philosophy of mathemat-
ics. It is curious to note, however, that if Popperian fallibilism is widespread in
scientific communities, Lakatosian fallibilism has never even shaken the mathemat-
ical community’s confidence in the infallible performative power of a deductive
proof. It seems, then, that no form of philosophical skepticism, even in the West, has
merely unsettled the solidity of mathematics, usually considered universal, unique,
and true.
IL (Lakatos, 2015, p. 4–5) – For more than two thousand years there has been an
argument between dogmatists and sceptics. The dogmatists hold that – by the power
of our human intellect and/or senses – we can attain truth and know that we have
attained it. The sceptics on the other hand either hold that we cannot attain the truth
at all (unless with the help of mystical experience), or that we cannot know if we can
attain it or that we have attained it. In this great debate, in which arguments are time
and again brought up to date, mathematics has been the proud fortress of dogmatism.
Whenever the mathematical dogmatism of the day got into a ‘crisis’, a new version
once again provided genuine rigour and ultimate foundations, thereby restoring the
image of authoritative, infallible, irrefutable mathematics, ‘the only Science that it
has pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind’.
Mokoi – I think this happens because Lakatosian fallibilism is really a fragile
skeptical philosophy, actually incapable to destabilize logic formal mathematics.
VP (Perminov, 1988, pp. 500–508) – Reliability of mathematical proofs can be
called in question on the basis of different arguments. […] The principal argument
by Lakatos, which is at the same time a proper empiricist argument, consists in
stating that a mathematical proof is never liberated from the meaningful context
and, consequently, from implicit assumptions. But the presence of implicit
assumptions within the proof may result in its refutation by counterexamples of
local or global nature. […] This argument is by all means true. But the principal
problem is whether we can completely get rid of such implicit assumptions giving
rise to counterexamples without total formalization of theory. Lakatos’ response is
definitely negative. We feel that he answers the question this way because he
identifies all types of intuition with empirical intuition, and for this reason any
meaningfulness is to him dangerous and undermines the validity of reasoning. In
this case, any proof is not fully justified and any attempt to make it such leads to
regression to infinity. Actually, the meaningfulness in mathematics differs essentially
from that in natural sciences. At a certain level of evolution, mathematical proof is
purified of all assumptions except those apodictically reliable ones. But this kind of
meaningfulness cannot give rise to counterexamples. […] Another argument by
Lakatos against the rigor of proof, which may be called methodological, procceds
from the distinction between rigor of the proof and that of the proof analysis.
Lakatos was convinced that by increasing the rigor of the proof analysis we always
call in question what had been previously accepted as indubitable, we narrow down
the ultimate justification layer and therefore reduce to the level of the unrigorous
what had earlier seemed rigorous and final. […] But the possibility of conceptualizing
the intuitive does not mean that we can correct or reject its content. Carrying out the
logical analysis of arithmetic we do not reject the praxiologically accepted
elementary truths. […] In mathematics there exists the area of ultimately valid, the
area of apodictic truths that cannot be limited or corrected by logical analysis. […]
Logical formalization of the theory is adequate only when it does not distort its
present content. […] Lakatos’ idea of the relative character of the justification layer
[…] proceeds from the erroneous concept of the intuitive as unavoidably invalid and
subject to logical corrections. The ultimate justification layer in mathematics is only
related to categorical and praxeological intuition and in the long run to fundamental
categorical distinctions; it cannot be changed by means of external (logical or
epistemological) criticism and in a sense remains unchanged through the entire
history of mathematics. […] In his criticism of the infallibility of mathematics
Lakatos resorts to another argument, namely, to the fact of historical changeability
of the criteria of rigor. If the latter evolve, then the assertion of the ultimate rigor of
a proof seems to lose sense. This argument is […] based on the false premise that
takes for granted that new criteria of rigor are able to eliminate mathematical results
obtained before their acceptance. But this is not supported by the history of
mathematics. This reasoning does not take into account in a due way the logical
criteria are secondary as compared to the contents of mathematics and that they are
introduced only under the condition of preserving the content achieved that is
ultimately based on the praxeological and categorical concepts.
Mbó – I am inclined to disagree with Perminov’s critique. It is based on the pos-
tulation of the so-called “apodictic” or “irrefutable” truths – such as “logical intu-
itions” and “praxeological intuitions”. These would compose an alleged “last
instance of justification” of the proof.
Opá kó mbó – I think it would be necessary to clarify what Perminov would be
understanding by “logical” and “praxeological” intuitions, claimed to be
unrectifiable, as opposed to “empirical” and “conceptual intuitions”, open to
criticism and logical analysis and correction.
Mbó – I’ll try to explain. For Perminov, “intuition” is any plausible reasoning or
inference that can be true or false. They are based on implicit assumptions,
sometimes legitimate and sometimes illegitimate, that are always amenable to
rectification. In such cases, we should make them explicit, so that illegitimate
implicit assumptions on which they are eventually based may come to light and be
corrected.
Oiepé – Could you give us examples of intuitive inference amenable to
rectifications?
Mbó – Empirical intuitive inferences, which are based on implicit assumptions
associated with empirical inductive generalizations, are rectifiable. The Hungarian
mathematician Farkas Bolyai proved, in 1832, that every polygon can be decomposed
into polygonal parts that, arranged in a certain way, reproduce another polygon that
occupies the same area as the first. Based on empirical-inductive reasoning, we
could think that we could extend this theorem from two-dimensional space to three-
dimensional space, assuming that it would also remain valid for polyhedra. But this
turns out to be false, as the German mathematician Max Dehn has proved. The
so-called “conceptual” intuitions are also rectifiable, that is, those that resort to
methods of direct visualization of non-obvious propositions already proven within
a logical-axiomatic theory, to assess their plausibility. An example would be the
construction of Euclidean models by Henri Poincaré and Félix Klein to visualize
non-obvious propositions of Lobachevsky’s geometry. Such models are only
accepted if they are compatible with the assumptions and propositions of the other
system they represent.
Oiepé – And what would be the apodictic or unrectifiable intuitive inferences?
Mbó – These are the so-called “logical”, “categorical” and “praxeological” intui-
tive inferences. The “logics” are those that are based on assumptions that make it
possible to logically reconcile two or more facts that are not necessarily compatible.
They decree, so to speak, compatibility. This is the case, for example, of propositions
such as: “the product of two negative numbers is a positive number”; “the square
root of 2 is equal to two raised to the fractional exponent ½”. These propositions are
inferences “decreed true” so that they do not contradict other praxiologically
accepted arithmetical propositions, such as the commutative and associative
properties of addition and multiplication of natural numbers and the distributive

property of multiplication in relation to the addition and subtraction of natural
numbers. On the other hand, the “categorical” intuitions, which are also unrectifiable,
are those that express the desire shared by the community of mathematicians to
preserve, in their proofs, the “empirical- perceptual obviousness” of certain evidence
referring to spatial relationships between figures accessible to vision, such as, for
example: “two distinct straight lines intersect at most at one point”.
Mokoi – But in Riemannian geometry, two straight lines always intersect at
two points.
Mbó – That’s right… But for categorical intuitions to be preserved, mathemati-
cians invent Euclidean geometric models or resort to existing models – a spherical
surface, for example – in which non-obvious propositions of non-Euclidean geom-
etries can be visualized in a Euclidean way.
Oiepé – Another example of a categorical intuitive proposition is that present in
the proof of Proposition 1, from Book 1 of The Elements. To construct the equilateral
triangle, Euclid implicitly assumes, based on an “empirical-perceptual obviousness”,
that the two circles with centers at each end of the side of the triangle should
intersect. When Hilbert set out to rectify the logical flaws in the proofs provided by
Euclid, he had to make this legitimate categorical intuitive assumption explicit,
elevating it to the status of an axiom of his formalized Euclidean geometry.
Opá kó mbó – The conclusion I am reaching is that “ultimately”, all these intu-
itions referred to by Perminov could be reduced to praxeological intuitions, the only
ones about which we have not yet been clarified. And if this “intuition” of mine is
correct, then why, for him, would only some of them be unrectifiable and not all of
them? And, if they are all, where would the need to logically prove what has already
passed through the sieve of the praxeologically irrefutable come from?
Irundyk – I think your questioning touches on the “Achilles’ heel” of formalist
mathematicians, logicists, intuitionists, conventionalists, etc. Or rather, it touches
on “Hilbert’s heel”, or Cauchy’s, or Dedekind’s, or Whitehead’s, or Russell’s, …
And let’s stop right here, because this list is going forever, it tends to infinity. It is
going to Cantor’s paradise, from where all of them are supposed to have left and to
where all of them would like to return to dwell for all eternity.
Mbó – That’s right… What Perminov calls “intuitive praxeological propositions”
are precisely the guiding rules of the ways of informally practicing mathematics by
different peoples and civilizations throughout history. What we would call, for
example, cultural practices and which he, referring to Kant, prefers to call
“intuitions”. But if, as Opá kó mbó said, they are all reducible to praxeological
intuitions, either they would all be open to logical and epistemological analysis and
rectification, or none would be.
IL (Lakatos, 2015, p. 5, our italics) – Our modest aim is to elaborate the point
that informal, quasi-empirical mathematics does not grow through a monotonous
increase of the number of indubitably established theorems but through the incessant
improvement of guesses by speculation and criticism, by the logic of proofs and
refutations. Since, however, metamathematics is a paradigm of informal,
quasi-empirical mathematics just now in rapid growth, the essay, by implication,

will also challenge modern mathematical dogmatism.
YP (Perminov, 1988, pp. 500–508, our italics) – Nobody seems to defend the
possibility of such a revision [of the praxiologically accepted mathematical contents
or propositions that formalism formalizes] and nevertheless, in general philosophical
speculations concerning mathematics we are quite willing to agree that “nothing is
absolute” and, therefore, assume the principal possibility of this revision. Such a
divergence between the practical attitude and the general philosophical outlook in
contemporary mathematics is accounted for by a number of circumstances and in
the first place by the non-critical transfer of the generally scientific methodological
propositions into the sphere of mathematics. Mathematical theory, in contrast to
empirical science, represents a specific artificial world with strictly defined elements
and a finite number of their properties. Within this artificial world we can establish
final relations subject to verifying by means of finite procedures. […] Thus, we have
all grounds to assert that the overwhelming part of mathematical results at work are
actually ultimately justified in the sense that their proofs are fully guaranteed against
refutation in the future, and this is true not only of specially verified formalized
mathematics but also of common meaningful mathematics whose proofs are
acknowledged to be sufficiently convincing.
Oiepé – I think that Perminov just echoes the formalist belief in the relevance of
theory and the conception of truth as consistency within a deductive system. In such
a world, a proposition can only be true if it is logically proved, after its due
conceptualization and insertion into a formal deductive system. Therefore, in the
so- called “scientific” mathematics, there can be no absolute truth of any isolated
proposition, because the truth of a proposition is always relative to the truths of
other propositions postulationally accepted as true, as well as relative to the rules of
inference prevailing in formal classical logic, the only ones accepted as true.
Perminov and the formal mathematicians think that they can escape the criticisms
of the Lakatosian fallibilists through the procedure of total formalization of
mathematical theories called “naive” or “intuitive”. Thus, according to them, only
adequate formalization of geometry (as, for example, Hilbert’s), or Arithmetic (as,
for example, Peano’s or Russell-Whitehead’s) could demonstrate unequivocally and
infallibly the truths of geometric or arithmetic propositions.
Irundyk – Let me conclude that the criticism that Perminov refers to the
Lakatosian fallibilism’s desire for logical revision of mathematical propositions
also applies to the logical desire expressed by Perminov, that it would be the
existence and rigor of logical proof that would ensure the truth of such propositions
and the trust we place in them.
Mosapyr – Totally agree! Even if Perminov defends that philosophical discourse
does not have the performative power to modify the effective ways of practicing
mathematics in the different fields of human activity, even if he does not explicitly
claim any philosophical perspective guiding his criticism. I think that all
philosophical perspectives that see practices as the last instance of justification of
mathematical knowledge – and, among them, above all, the historical-dialectical
materialist perspectives – paradoxically tend to consider ‘mathematics’ only the
justificationist narratives or meta-narratives – rhetorical or formal-symbolic – about

these practices. Everything happens as if cultural practices could only acquire a
status of scientificity after having been enclosed by such narratives or metanarratives.
LH (Hogben, 1971, p. 3) – If we mean by science the written record of man’s
understanding of nature, its story begins five thousand years ago. Western science is
thus a fabric to which threads of many colours have contributed before Britain,
North America and Northern Europe were literate. Egypt and Mesopotamia, the
Phoenician colonies and the Greek-speaking world of Mediterranean antiquity, the
civilizations of China, India and the Moslem world supplied warp and woof in turn
before Christendom began to make its own contribution.
LH (Hogben, 1973, Forward) – The first volume in this series, Beginnings and
Blunders, traced the story of the skills our ancestors acquired, and the skills they left
in their wake, before science began. This book starts with the need for a calendar to
regulate the seasonal order of seed-sowing and flock-tending. For the construction
of such a calendar men of the New Stone Age doubtless drew on the knowledge
gained throughout many millennia from the scanning of the night skies by men who
were still nomads and from the observation of the sun’s seasonal changes when
village life began. The art of keeping a written record of the lapse of time took shape
about 5000 years ago and was the achievement of the priestly guardians of the
calendar in the temple sites of Egypt and Iraq. An incidental, but not itself useful,
by-product of this phase of infant science was the art offorecasting correctly the
occurrence of eclipses.
Mosapyr – Note that, although Hogben recognizes the performance of astro-
nomical practices by still nomadic human beings, he does not see such practices as
scientific, given that he would only tend to attribute such a status to them when they
acquire a linguistic or symbolic character.
Irundyk – I think that this way of legitimizing a practice as scientific is typically
colonizing, because it ends up, by extension, exclusively empowering the different
linguistic communities specialized in producing disciplinary narratives and
metanarratives about practices that are effectively carried out in different fields of
human activity.
Mosapyr – Furthermore, the way in which Hogben sees and characterizes sci-
ence as a discourse aimed at understanding “nature”, complements and explains the
misunderstandings and ideological strategies triggered by the colonizing discourses
of science and mathematics to empower themselves and differentiate themselves
from other types of cultural practices.
Irundyk – Your clarification suggests that this way of characterizing science, at
the same time that it institutes and produces an abstract, unitary and universal image
of “nature”, also comes to see it as an intelligible systemic totality, internally
structured and teleologically preorganized phenomena that could be explained by
different linguistic communities that turned to investigate and decipher this supposed
universal modus operandis of nature. If, in the domain of the natural sciences, since
Newton’s Principia, the different scientific theories – these great and pretentious
metanarratives of the modus operandis of nature – have taken up and continued the
cosmogonies of the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, in the domain of mathematics,
this means that since Russell and Whitehead’s Principia, the supposedly universal
mathematical metanarrative of pure mathematicians or contemporary theorists does
nothing more than to continue the Pythagorean-Platonic “cosmotheogony”.2
Mosapyr – I tend to conclude that if Hogben, Lakatos and Perminov, in different
ways, try to remove a supposed universal mathematics from its logical-formal cage
to see it imbricated in human practices and activities, this is only to re-imprison it in
rhetorical or symbolic-formal (meta)narratives cages.
Irundyk – I think, however, that none of these narratives, even when they wish to,
are capable of radically breaking with the alleged universality and uniqueness of the
axiomatic-formal metanarrative of Western mathematics.
Mosapyr – In addition to these colonizing critiques of the equally colonizing
philosophy of mathematical fallibilism that we are discussing here, I think that
Lakatos – and even less so Perminov – do not recognize the existence of mathematics
other than Western logico-formal mathematics, but only defending the invariant
method of proofs and disproofs to explain the way mathematics is invented and
developed. Thus, even if Lakatos was indeed intent on challenging mathematical
formalism, he paradoxically does nothing more than to recognize it as the unique
and exclusive logic of the discovery and development of “informal and quasi-
empirical mathematics”, since, for him, unlike the absolute power of mere internalist
criticism, other external factors – economic, technological, political, ideological,
religious, legal, environmental, warlike, ethical, aesthetic, class struggles, etc. –
would not play any relevant role in this development.
RCK (Raju, 2011a, p. 274–279, our italics) – Does formalism, then, provide a
universal metaphysics? Now, it is an elementary matter of commonsense that
metaphysics can never be universal. However, the case of 2 + 2 = 4 is often naively
cited as “proof” of the universality of mathematics. This is naïve because the
practical notion of 2 which derives as an abstraction from the empirical observation
of 2 dogs, 2 stones etc. has nothing whatsoever to do with formal mathematics. […]
The circuits on a computer chip routinely implement an arithmetic in which
1 + 1 = 0 (exclusive disjunction), or 1 + 1 = 1 (inclusive disjunction). Thus, formally,
it is necessary to specify that the symbols 2, +, and 4 relate to Peano’s postulates.
Trying to specify this brings in the metaphysics of infinity—a real computer (with
finite memory, not a Turing machine) can never implement Peano arithmetic,
because the notion of a natural number cannot be finitely specified. Thus, formalism
does not provide a universal metaphysics. However, the philosophy of mathematics
as metaphysics, combined with the myth of mathematics as universal truth, helped
to promote a particular brand of metaphysics as universal. This is problematic
2
In this passage, Irundyk is using the word “cosmotheogony” to refer to any metaphysical narrative
that, analogously to the Pythagorean and Platonic cosmogonies, explains and justifies the emer-
gence, organization and functioning of nature – or, in this case, the functioning and justification of
linguistic-symbolic systems of a logical-deductive character – based on diffuse forces and super-
natural divine entities, or else, on linguistic-argumentative concepts that are supposed to be non-
factual, immaterial and timeless.
because while formal mathematics is no longer explicitly religious, like mathesis,3

its metaphysics remains religiously biased. On post-Crusade Christian rational
theology, it was thought that God is bound by logic (cannot create an illogical
world) but is free to create empirical facts of his choice. Hence, Western theologians
came to believe that logic (which binds God) is “stronger” than empirical facts
(which do not bind God). […] The metaphysics of formal math is aligned to post-
Crusade Western theology which regarded metaphysics as more reliable than
physics. In sharp contrast, all Indian systems of philosophy, without any exception,
accept the empirical (pratyaksa) as the first means of proof (pramana) while the
“Lokayata” reject inference/deduction as unreliable. So, Indian philosophy
considered empirical proof as more reliable than logical inference. Thus, the
contrary idea of metaphysical proof as “stronger” than empirical proof would lead
at one stroke to the rejection of all Indian systems of philosophy. This illustrates
how the metaphysics of formal math is not universal but is biased against other
systems of philosophy. Now, deductive inference is based on logic, but which logic?
Deductive proof lacks certainty unless we can answer this question with certainty.
Russell thought, like Kant, that logic is unique and comes from Aristotle. However,
one could take instead Buddhist or Jain logic, or quantum logic, or the logic of
natural language, none of which is 2-valued. The theorems that can be inferred from
a given set of postulates will naturally vary with the logic used: for example, all
proofs by contradiction would fail with Buddhist logic. One would no longer be
able to prove the existence of a Lebesgue non-measurable set, for example. This
conclusively establishes that the metaphysics of formal math is religiously biased,
for the theorems of formal mathematics vary with religious beliefs. Furthermore, the
metaphysics of formal math has no other basis apart from Western culture: it can
hardly be supported on the empirical grounds it rejects as inferior! The religious
bias also applies to the postulates. In principle, a formal theory could begin with any
postulates. However, in practice, those postulates are decided by authoritative
mathematicians in the West, as in Hilbert’s synthetic geometry. The calculus, as
taught to millions of school students today, is based on the notion of limits and the
continuum. As noted by Naquib al-Attas, the idea of an infinitely divisible continuum
is contrary to the beliefs of Islamic thinkers like al-Ghazali and al-Ashari who
believed in atomism. (In fact, the calculus originated in India with similar atomistic
beliefs: that the subdivisions of a circle must stop when they reach atomic
proportions.) This does not affect any practical application: all practical application
3
According to Raju, “mathematics” is an originally Greek word that was invented by the early
Pythagoreans to mean a “techne of mathesis,” that is, a “technique of learning.” It was later used
by the Platonic Socrates, in the famous dialogue “Menon,” to name and characterize his maieutic
method of learning, which consisted in making the student recall knowledge that he had suppos-
edly learned in previous lives, through a skillful rhetorical-verbal argumentation by his teacher-
interlocutor. As we can see, the maieutic method was based on the Platonic theory of reminiscence,
which believed in the idea of the reincarnation of the soul from the movement of renewal of
the cosmos.
of calculus today can be done using computers which use floating point numbers
which are “atomistic”, being finite.
Neglecting small numbers is not necessarily erroneous, since it is not very differ-
ent from neglecting infinitesimals in a non-Archimedean field, and can be similarly
formalised, since the (formal) notion of infinitesimal is not God-given but is a mat-
ter of definition; but students are never told this. They are told that any real calcula-
tion done on a computer is forever erroneous, and the only right way to do arithmetic
is by using the metaphysics of infinity built into Peano’s postulates or the postulates
of set theory. Likewise, they are taught that the only right way to do calculus is to
use limits. Thus, school students get indoctrinated with the Western theological
biases about infinity built into the notions of formal real numbers and limits, which
notions are of nil practical value for science and engineering which require real
calculation. In contrast to this close linkage of mathematics to theology in the West,
most school math (arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, calculus) actually originated
in the non-West for practical purposes. From “Arabic numerals” (arithmetic algo-
rithms) to trigonometry and calculus, this math was imported by the West for the
practical advantages it offered (to commerce, astronomy, and navigation). This
practically-oriented non-Western mathematics (actually ganita, or hisab), had noth-
ing to do with religious beliefs such as mathesis. However, because of its different
epistemology it posed difficulties for the theologically-laced notion of mathematics
in the West. For example, from the sulba sutra to Aryabhata to the Yuktibhasa,
Indian mathematics freely used empirical means of proof. Obviously, an empirical
proof will not in any way diminish the practical value of mathematics. However,
trying to force-fit this practical, non-Western math into Western religiously-biased
ideas about math as metaphysical made the simplest math enormously
complicated.
JF (Ferreirós, 2009, p. 380–381) – Raju thus proposes to deviate from classical
logic, taking into account the empirical, in search of ‘the logic of the empirical
world’. Although we cannot enter into the question in any detail, let me sketch an
argument that Raju does not seem to consider. As usually understood, logic is not
concerned with the world, but with assertions about the world — or more generally,
with representations of phenomena. Logic is not a reflection on ontological matters,
but on language and representations. And when it comes to representing, it seems
most natural to consider just two options: a representation can be either adequate (to
some degree of accuracy) or inadequate, tertium exclusum. This way of grounding
bivalent logic, by the way, has little to do with culturally charged conceptions of
God or religion or the mind. (That, however, is not to say that there have been no
historical connections between Western mathematics and religion; but in my view
the topic should be pursued along a line different from Raju’s insistence on the
alleged theological basis of Western notions of logic and proof). The author asserts
that abolishing the separation between mathematics and empirical science ‘is fatal
to the present-day (Western) notion of mathematics’. This suggests that he is not
well acquainted with relevant philosophical literature, such as Quine or Putnam, or
relevant historical figures like Riemann, Poincare, Weyl, or even Hilbert. The
assertion is linked with his insistence throughout on considering formalism and a
formal notion of proof as the quintessence of modern mathematics, but this view,
perhaps natural in a computer scientist, is highly dubious and ignores too many
other aspects of the discipline. […] On the basis of his twofold criticism of the ideal
of proof (based on its theological underpinnings and its reliance on bivalent logic),
Raju concludes that mathematics is best conceived as calculation, not proof. […]
Since in Raju’s view the choice of logic must depend on empirical considerations,
and logic in turn determines inference and proof, he finds reason to believe that the
Western separation of proof from the empirical is fundamentally wrong. Hence his
preference for the traditional Indian notion of pramana, and also his insistence
throughout this work that ‘deduction will forever remain more fallible than
induction’. In this reviewer’s opinion, the argument remains far from convincing.
Opá kó mbó – I think that José Ferreirós’ criticism of C. K. Raju does not hold
up. When Raju proposes to deviate from classical binary logic, taking into account
the empirical, in search of the “logic of the empirical world”, so as not to separate
mathematics from the empirical sciences, and JF opposes him with the argument
that bivalent classical logic – and therefore the logic of the essentialist principles of
identity, tertium exclusum and non-contradiction – is not concerned with the world,
but with statements about the world – that is, with language, representations and
propositions – he does nothing more than commit himself to a representationalist
picture of language and a linguistic picture of logic, pictures that Wittgenstein
himself, already in the Tractatus, was willing to abandon and which, in fact, he
abandoned in his later works.
Mosapyr – I tend to agree with you, but I think that in speaking of “logic of the
empirical world”, Raju seems to approach Lakatos’ thesis of the existence of a
guiding logic for the informal practice of mathematics. As far as Lakatos is
concerned, it is neither a deductivist nor an inductivist logic, but rather a fallibilist
logic of proofs and refutations which is triggered to deconstruct confidence in the
deductive proof. Raju also discredits both deduction and induction, although
deduction, especially one based on binary logic, seems to him more fallible than
induction. He even presents a potent argument that shows us where and why
classical binary logic fails: “It is a well known principle of two-valued logic (which
is used in the current method of mathematical proof) that any desired conclusion,
whatsoever, may be derived from contradictory assumptions, which is why
theologians use them so often” (Raju, 2021, p. 18).
Mokoi – To me, Raju is saying that if the first proposition of the truth table of the
conditional operator of classical logic is a contradiction, that is, p ∧ (¬p), whatever
the truth value (V or F) of the second proposition is, the conditional will always be
true. This means that if you start from a contradiction in your premises, you will be
able to conclude anything. See, then, what he means by this is that you can logically
prove any fake news!!! And that you can use classical logic not only as a (theo)logic,
but also as a (ideo)logic!
Mosapyr – With this, I understand that Raju’s decolonial critique of Western
mathematics goes beyond a properly logical or socio-anthropological-cultural
critique. And even though this political-decolonial critique is made for defending
mathematical multiculturalism, Raju, unlike ethnomathematicians, does not see the
practice of Western mathematics as another ethnomathematics, among others. I tend

to agree with him on this point, because the axiomatic-formal metanarrative of
Western mathematics can never support the different ways in which mathematics is
actually invented and practiced in different fields of human activity.
Mokoi – This means that it would no longer be necessary to strive for any other
logic to support these different effective ways of inventing and practicing
mathematics. In my view, there is not even “a logic of the empirical world” and,
even less, different logics that support different mathematical practices, because a
mathematical practice does not need and cannot be founded. Thus, if on the one
hand, Perminov and Ferreirós believe that a logical-deductive proof in fact proves a
proposition that one wishes to prove, Lakatos and Raju believe that the proof proves
nothing. For Lakatos logical proof does not prove because it is always open to
criticism or refutation by counterexamples, whereas for Raju logical proof does not
prove because any proposition one wishes to prove can be inferred from contradictory
assumptions.
LW (Wittgenstein apud Waismann, 1979, p. 33) – In mathematics there are not,
first, propositions that have sense by themselves and, second, a method to determine
the truth or falsity of propositions; there is only a method, and what is called a
proposition is only an abbreviated name for the method.
Mosapyr – In fact, Pythagoras’ proposition, for example, is nothing more than an
algorithm, a technique, an “abbreviated method” to calculate the area of a square
built on the hypotenuse of a right triangle as a function of the areas of the squares
built on the legs. And if, as Wittgenstein says, the proposition is just an abbreviation
of a method, that is, of a way of doing something, then there can be no difference
between the method and an alleged “proof” of the method’s effectiveness. Therefore,
the alleged “proof” does not prove, because a mathematical proposition is simply an
algorithm, a way of doing something that does not need to be proved or justified.
Opá kó mbó – I agree with you that there is no “logic of the empirical world” nor
different logics that underlie different mathematical practices. But I disagree when
you say that a mathematical proposition does not need to be grounded because it is
a cultural practice, a method, a way of doing it. I think that such a practice does not
need to be logically grounded; however, it needs to be somehow validated to have
been seen and elected as a “good practice”, that is, in Raju’s terms, as a “practice
that works”. Raju talks about “empirical proofs” of validating a mathematical
practice, and I wonder what he means by that.
AA (Aleksandrov et al., 1999, p. 61–62) – The concepts of arithmetic correspond
to the quantitative relations of collections of objects. These concepts arose by way
of abstraction, as a result of the analysis and generalization of an immense amount
of practical experience. […] The conclusions of arithmetic are so convincing and
unalterable, because they reflect experience accumulated in the course of
unimaginably many generations and have in this way fixed themselves firmly in the
mind of man and in language.
Mosapyr – If, for Raju, “empirical proof” means the same as “empirical-induc-
tive proof” – since he seems to believe that ordinary induction based on generalized
empirical abstractions of facts validated by reiterated experience is less fallible than
non-factual logical deduction – I think that he would not only be dissolving

differences between mathematics and natural sciences, but also committing himself
to an untenable and repeatedly questioned empirical-inductivist philosophy of
science or, at best, to a Popperian empirical-fallibilist philosophy. This would
expose him, therefore, to all the criticisms that these philosophies have received
throughout history, notably the one to which Frege (1960) submitted the inductivist
empiricism with which John Stuart Mill (2009) tried to “found” arithmetic.
LW (Wittgenstein apud Waismann, 1979, p. 33) – Most people think that com-
plete induction is merely a way of reaching a certain proposition; that the method of
induction is supplemented by a particular inference saying, therefore, that this
proposition applies to all numbers. Here I ask the question, What about this
‘therefore’? There is no ‘therefore’ here! Complete induction is the proposition to
be proved, it is the whole thing, not just the path taken by the proof. This method is
not a vehicle for getting anywhere.
Mosapyr – On the other hand, it may be that by “empirical proof” Raju means
“visual proofs” or static “perceptual proofs” or, more broadly, dynamic “mechanical
proofs”, analogous to those that peoples of antiquity produced to record graphically
(in clay tablets; on the walls of temples and tombs; in leather, fabric, or papyrus;
etc.), certain practices, techniques, or algorithms that have been repeatedly
successful in different fields of human activity (agriculture, astronomy, navigation,
construction, commerce, etc.). Such types of proofs, which I prefer to call
“praxeological proofs”, came, over time, to be verbally described through oral or
written alphabetic languages and to receive additional support from local logical-
rhetorical-verbal arguments, that is, without that they were embedded in any
axiomatic-deductive system (proofs of Heron of Alexandria, Pappus of Alexandria,
etc.) that logically connected them with each other.
Opá kó mbó – If this is the case, then I would tend to give credit to Raju, but on
condition that a methodological-statutory difference is made between “empirical-
inductive proof” and “praxeological proof”. And when I speak of “praxeological
proofs” it is to distinguish them from either “empirical-inductive proofs” or
“probabilistic proofs” defended by historical-dialectical materialist philosophies
committed to classical or asymptotic conceptions of truth – seen, respectively, as a
reliable reflection or as an asymptotic approximation of empirical-natural or social
facts through verbal language – either of “conventionalist proofs” committed to
conceptions of truth as a consensus of expert communities, or even of “pragmatic
proofs” committed to the conception of truth as accommodation of empirical-
natural or social facts to human or socio-community purposes. The problem I see,
for example, with Richard Rorty’s postmodern pragmatism is that it continues to
speak with the voice of the European imperialist colonizer who, arrogantly
distinguishing and distancing himself from the natural beings and forms of life that
we, human beings, constitute with them, presupposes being able to continue wishing
to arbitrarily and unilaterally impose on them as many “true” discourses as there are
human purposes. Thus, if Rorty no longer sees language as a “mirror of nature”
(Rorty, 1981), he continues to see nature as an unproblematic multiplicity of mirrors
of language: RR – (Rorty, 1998, our italics) – For us pragmatists, there can and must
be thousands of ways to describe things and people – as many purposes as we have

relating to things and people. But this plurality is not problematic, it does not raise
philosophical problems, nor does it fragment knowledge. […] Reality is one, but
descriptions of it are countless […], because human beings have and must have
different goals.
Mosapyr – So, I speak of “praxeological proofs” to refer to cultural practices that
reveal themselves as capable of providing satisfactory or adequate technologic
solutions to problems that arise in different fields of human activity. I think that such
proofs do not submit cultural practices to any regimes of truth, not because we could
impose – supposedly à la Rorty – our purposes and desires on the natural and
technological beings that participate in them, allowing or preventing the
contemplation of our desires and purposes, but because I see such proofs as the last
instances of justification of themselves and, therefore, not needing and not being
able to be grounded. If a cultural practice has been invented and repeatedly practiced,
it is because it is already an adequate response to a given difficulty and, for that
reason, it functions as an unequivocal know-how, as a technique or algorithm, as a
norm that, if followed strictly speaking, it must lead to the intended purpose. In this
sense, any attempt to ground – logically, philosophically – a practice, or to suppose
it fallible and rectifiable, shown itself as meaningless.
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-217, our italics) – “How am I able to follow a rule?”
If this is not a question about causes, then it is about the justification for my acting
in this way in complying with the rule. Once I have exhausted the justifications, I
have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is
simply what I do”. (Remember that we sometimes demand explanations for the sake
not of their content, but of their form. Our requirement is an architectural one; the
explanation a kind of sham corbel that supports nothing).
Mosapyr – There is no single “logic of the empirical world”, no single “dialectic
of nature”. Nor there is a “logic of praxis”, as if human praxis were one and there
was a single logic that guides the relationships between human beings and other
natural and technological beings. We could, if we wished, speak of logics of
practices, to clarify that each cultural practice is guided by rules of an idiosyncratic
praxeological logic. But where would such rules come from, if not from agreements
among forms of life manifested in the dialectical interactions between humans and
other natural beings involved in the language games that constitute such practices,
so that the purposes of each game are achieved? A praxeological logic is not a
linguistic-propositional logic, but a logic of “this is how I act”, of “this is how I
should act”, if I want to achieve such purpose. LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-130, our
italics) – Our clear and simple language-games are not preliminary studies for a
future regimentation of language as it were, first approximations, ignoring friction
and air resistance. Rather, the language games stand there as objects of comparison
which, through similarities and dissimilarities, are meant to throw light on features
of our language.
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-131, our italics) – For we can avoid unfairness or
vacuity in our assertions only by presenting the model as what it is, as an object of
comparison as a sort of yardstick; not as a preconception to which reality must

correspond. (The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy).
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-107, our italics) – We have got on to slippery ice
where there is no friction, and so, in a certain sense, the conditions are ideal; but
also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need
friction. Back to the rough ground!
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-126, our italics) – Philosophy just puts everything
before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open
to view, there is nothing to explain. For whatever may be hidden is of no interest to
us. The name “philosophy” might also be given to what is possible before all new
discoveries and inventions.
Irundyk – Are you trying to say that ‘praxiological proof’ is ‘technological
proof’? And that Raju, instead of trying to dissolve mathematics in the empirical
sciences, empiricizing it, should, on the contrary, dissolve the empirical sciences in
mathematics, normalizing them?
Mosapyr – What I mean is that the distinctions between knowing and knowing
how, between pure and applied sciences, between empirical and normative sciences,
between science and technology, are false. Knowledge is only knowledge if it is
know- how in a normative language game that is played in a form of life, be it ‘real’
or ‘virtual’, and not in a possible fictional form of life. And there is no know-how
that is not guided by a technique, algorithm or invented norm.
Oiepé – Following your line of reasoning, Mosapyr, Raju’s claim that practicing
a decolonizing mathematics education would consist in orienting it towards a new
philosophy of mathematics – empirical-inductivist, empirical-fallibilist, pragmatic
or dialectical historical-materialist – would be wrong, since you argue that a
praxeological image of mathematics should not strictly be seen as a new philosophy.
Wouldn’t it, however, be a new philosophy of technology?
Mosapyr – At least it would not be a dogmatic philosophical orientation of math-
ematics or mathematics education. We could say that it is a non-dogmatic therapeu-
tic philosophical orientation, since dogmatism does not combine with
decolonialism.
Oiepé – Here, I wonder if what LW calls dogmatism is not the same as what Raju
calls theologization. And if it seems to me legitimate to make such an identification,
I could also say that what LW points out as the legitimate limit of philosophizing,
so that we do not fall into dogmatism, would be exactly what Raju denounces as the
removal or placement in parentheses of the “empirical world” on the part of
scholastic, theological or logical-formal mathematics practiced by Western
mathematicians. For, as LW says, when our ordinary language decides to go on
holidays, it stops working on the hard and rocky soil of the praxeological “civil
world”, and our discourse tends to commit the greatest metaphysical blunders and
follies, it loses its common sense, turning itself into a biased, partial, ideological,
and theological nonsense.
Mbó – Our discourse tends to become fake news, as I prefer to say.
Oiepé – If it is indeed true that Western mathematics is a huge fake news, then,
for Wittgenstein, fake news would be just a false step in philosophizing.
Mokoi – The conclusion I reach is the same as that of Raju: that the theological
narrative of formal mathematics is not just a false step in philosophizing, but a false
step in ideologizing… a colonizing ideology.
LW (Wittgenstein, 1976, p. 13–14) – I am proposing to talk about the foundations
of mathematics. An important problem arises from the subject itself: How can I – or
anyone who is not a mathematician – talk about this? What right has a philosopher
to talk about mathematics? One might say: From what I have learned at school – my
knowledge of elementary mathematics – I know something about what can be done
in the higher branches of the subject. […] People who have talked about the
foundations of mathematics have constantly been tempted to make prophecies-
going ahead of what has already been done. As if they had a telescope with which
they can’t possibly reach the moon, but can see what is ahead of the mathematician
who is flying there. That is not what I am going to do at all. In fact, I am going to
avoid it at all costs; it will be most important not to interfere with the mathematicians.
I must not make a calculation and say, “That’s the result; not what Turing says it is”.
[…] One might think that I am going to give you, not new calculations but a new
interpretation of these calculations. But I am not going to do that either. I am going
to talk about the interpretation of mathematical symbols, but I will not give a new
interpretation. Mathematicians tend to think that interpretations of mathematical
symbols are a lot of jaw-some kind of gas which surrounds the real process, the
essential mathematical kernel. A philosopher provides gas, or decoration-like
squiggles on the wall of a room. I may occasionally produce new interpretations,
not in order to suggest they are right, but in order to show that the old interpretation
and the new are equally arbitrary. I will only invent a new interpretation to put side
by side with an old one and say, “Here, choose, take your pick”. I will only make
gas to expel old gas.4 Opá kó mbó – Well… based on this speech by LW, I will then
make my arbitrary decolonial choice: I will produce no more chatter about the
foundations of mathematics.
And even less about mathematics. Because I came to the conclusion that neither
mathematics nor mathematics education do not really need a philosophy…
Mokoi – I think differently! It is precisely in order not to take the false step that
we need not a new philosophy… and, even less, an old dogmatic, theological,
ideological, logical philosophy that proves to be yet another new way of chatting,
but rather a new way of philosophizing… a therapeutic philosophizing, similar to
that practiced by LW himself!
Mbó – But isn’t philosophizing doing philosophy? In philosophizing, LW makes
and practices a philosophy…
Mosapyr – For me, what is at stake is whether we need foundations, after all.
This necessity can be seen as a false problem in philosophy. But we can, yes,
practice a non- dogmatic, non-theological, non-ideological, non-logical philosophy.
A philosophy without foundations, a new way of philosophizing…
4
The way in which LW sought to challenge the fundamentalist view of mathematics in his intro-
ductory speech to the set of classes on the foundations of mathematics taught by him in Cambridge,
from 1929 to 1944.
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-109) – Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitch-

ment of our understanding by the resources of our language.
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-119) – The results of philosophy are the discovery of
some piece of plain nonsense and the bumps that the understanding has got by
running up against the limits of language. They a these bumps a make us see the
value of that discovery.
LW (Wittgenstein, PI-124) – Philosophy must not interfere in any way with the
actual use of language, so it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot justify it
either. It leaves everything as it is. It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no
mathematical discovery can advance it. A “leading problem of mathematical logic”
is for us a problem of mathematics like any other.
Mbó – I think, then, that what is at stake here is to think about other ways of see-
ing and practicing philosophy, different from those that seek foundations and
essences… Ways that do not tempt us to move away from the rough ground of life,
from forms of life.
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-309) – What is your aim in philosophy? To show the
fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
Mokoi – But LW does not show the fly how to get out of the bottle by teaching
him one way or another, an old or new philosophy, but by pointing out the ways to
avoid, signaling him how to philosophize deconstructively, in a non-dogmatic way,
repeatedly diving into the river of doubt… and not being easily carried away by the
current of the river…
LW (Wittgenstein, 2011, p. 8) – I must plunge into the water of doubt again
and again.
Oiepé – But isn’t it Raju himself who insists that we should educate and educate
ourselves mathematically – in a critical and decolonizing way – by making
mathematics oriented towards a new philosophy? When he says that mathematics
education should not be separated from science education, what new philosophy
would that be? A new scientism? A new computational pragmatism?
RCK (Raju, 2011b, p. 282–283, our italics) – This theological Western view of
math was globalised by the political force of colonialism. It was stabilised by
Macaulay’s well known intervention with the education system, and the continued
support for it is readily understood on Huntington’s doctrine of soft-power. And this
way of teaching math continues to be uncritically followed to this day even after
independence. This is the first attempt to try to re-examine and critically re-evaluate
the Western philosophy of math and suggest an alternative to European
ethnomathematics. The new philosophy proposed by this author has now been
renamed “zeroism”, to emphasize that it is being used for its practical value, and
does not depend upon (the interpretation of) any Buddhist texts about sunyavada. A
key idea is that of mathematics as an adjunct physical theory. Another key idea is
that, like infinitesimals, small numbers may be neglected, as in a computer
calculation, but on the new grounds that ideal representations are erroneous, for
they can never be achieved in reality (which is continuously changing). (Exactly
what constitutes a discardable “small” number, or a “practical infinitesimal”, is
decided by the context, as with formal infinitesimals or order-counting.) This is the
antithesis of the Western view that mathematics being “ideal” must be “perfect”,
and that only metaphysical postulates for manipulating infinity (as in set theory),
laid down by authoritative Western mathematicians, are reliable, and all else is
erroneous.
LW (Wittgenstein, 2017, PI-218) – Whence the idea that the beginning of a series
is a visible section of rails invisibly laid to infinity? Well, we might imagine rails
instead of a rule. And infinitely long rails correspond to the unlimited application
of a rule.
CKR (Raju, 2021, p. 44–45) – Though colonial education supposedly came for the
sake of science most people entirely overlook the actual consequences. The fact is that
after nearly 2 centuries of colonial education the net result is (a) widespread mathe-
matical illiteracy and (b) belief in all sorts of superstitions and myths about mathemat-
ics. A typical such belief is that mathematics is universal and cannot be decolonized
[…]. This total mathematical illiteracy among the colonially educated is combined
with two deep-seated superstitions: (a) the superstition (most manifest in Wikipedia)
that the West and only the West is trustworthy, and (b) the belief that any change from
blindly imitating the West can only be for the worse. (“Doomsday awaits the unbeliev-
ers”). The colonized hence resist change. For example, a stock argument of the igno-
rant against change, and in favour of current math, is that “it works”. But what exactly
works? The ignorant don’t understand how rocket trajectories, for example, are calcu-
lated. They conflate normal and formal math, the way rationalists conflate normal
reason (reason plus facts) with formal or church reason (reason minus facts, faith-
based reason). What works (and works better) is NOT the formal mathematics of
proof but the normal mathematics of calculation (much of it imported by Europe from
India for its practical value, starting from elementary arithmetic algorithms). […] A
simple rule of the thumb is that anything which can be done on a computer (such as
calculation of rocket trajectories) is normal mathematics, and most practical applica-
tions of math today involve computers. The bigger problem is this: from this position
of the darkest ignorance wrapped in the deepest superstition, even discussing an alter-
native to Western ethnomathematics is taboo for the colonized.
LW5 – David Hilbert said that “no one will expel us from the paradise created by
Cantor”. I must tell you that I would not dream of expelling someone from this
paradise. I would do something quite different. I would try to show him that it is not
5
The dialogue between the specters of LW and Alan Turing (AT) that followed is a partial recon-
stitution of excerpts from the lectures on philosophy of mathematics given by LW in 1939, at the
University of Cambridge. Such reconstitution is based on Monk (1991, p. 401–428) and on
(Wittgenstein, 1998). According to Monk, the purpose of these classes was the deconstruction of
the idolatry of science, since LW considered it the most salient symptom of the decadence of
Western culture. Turing had also given, at the same institution, a course entitled “Fundamentals of
Mathematics,” which was nothing more than an introduction to mathematical logic and the tech-
nique of proving theorems of a rigorously axiomatic system. The more general context of the
conversation between AT and LW that we selected here was the possibility of reinterpreting math-
ematics in the light of Cantor’s work, which was seen by LW as a quagmire of philosophical confu-
sion. The problem around which the conversation revolves is the role of contradiction in the
calculations of logical-formal mathematics and in human activities.
a paradise – so that he would then leave on his own initiative. I would say, “You are
welcome; but look around.”
LW – The mathematical problems of what have been called the foundations of
mathematics have, for us, as much foundation as a painted stone supports a painted
tower. LW – The mathematician discovers nothing. A mathematical proof does not
establish the truth of a conclusion; it only fixes the meaning of certain signs. The
“inexorability” of mathematics, therefore, does not consist in the certain knowledge
of mathematical truths, but in the fact that mathematical propositions are
grammatical. For example, to deny that “two plus two equals four” is not to disagree
with a widely held opinion on a matter of fact; is to reveal ignorance of the meaning
of the terms involved. Do you understand me, Turing?
AT – I understand, but I don’t agree that it’s just a matter of giving new meanings
to words.
LW – You don’t object to anything I say. You agree with every word. But it dis-
agrees with the idea you believe underlies it.
AT – You cannot be confident about applying your calculus until you know that
there is no hidden contradiction in it.
LW – There seems to me to be an enormous mistake there. For your calculus
gives certain results, and you want the bridge not to break down. I’d say things can
go wrong in only two ways: either the bridge breaks down or you have made a
mistake in your calculation – for example you multiplied wrongly. But you seem to
think there may be a third thing wrong: the calculus is wrong.
AT – No. What I object to is the bridge falling down.
LW – But how do you know that it will fall down? Isn’t that a question of phys-
ics? It may be that if one throws dice in order to calculate the bridge it will never
fall down.
AT – If one takes Frege’s symbolism and gives someone the technique of multi-
plying in it, then by using a Russell paradox he could get a wrong multiplication.
LW – This would come to doing something which we would not call multiplying.
You give him a rule for multiplying and when he gets to a certain point he can go in
either of two ways, one of which leads him all wrong.
AT – You seem to be saying, that if one uses a little common sense, one will not
get into trouble.
LW – That is NOT what I mean at all. My point is rather that a contradiction can-
not lead one astray because it leads nowhere at all. One cannot calculate wrongly
with a contradiction, because one simply cannot use it to calculate. One can do
nothing with contradictions, except waste time puzzling over them.
Mbó – I came to the conclusion that there is no fundamental divergence between
Raju and LW, regarding the way of seeing and evaluating Western logical-formalized
mathematics, said to be unique and universal: an infinite chatter… an infinite ‘meta-
chatter’, empty, unproductive, useless, contradictory, ideological and colonizing
coated with a surface layer of so-called “pure”, “rigorous”, “scientific”, “impartial”
and “neutral” varnish. The difference between the two is consists in that Raju tends
to approximate, or even to see as indistinct, scientific and mathematical practices,
whereas Wittgenstein seems to make a subtle and not radical distinction
between them.
Mosapyr – And in your view, what would that distinction be?

Mbó – For LW, scientific and mathematical practices seem to interact with natu-
ral beings, making them participate in language games aimed at fulfilling different
purposes. In scientific language games, human participants, to achieve different
reproducible social purposes, seek to interact dialectically with natural beings
involved in the game, searching for patterns and regularities in the ways they behave
in these interactions. In turn, in mathematical language games, human beings invent
and impose patterns of regularity on other beings involved in the game, so that nor-
mative social purposes are unequivocally achieved. For both Raju and LW, mathe-
matics actually invented and practiced in different fields of human activity cannot
be seen as a transposition or application of fundamentalist logico-formal mathemat-
ics. Even because, when we participate in language games guided by normative
purposes, in any context of human activity, the rules that guide our actions are not
rules of formal logic, based on the principle of identity, the principle of the excluded-
third and the principle of non-contradiction. They are rules or empirical statements
that we invent or follow, so that the intended purposes, in each situation, are
unequivocally achieved. We cannot, therefore, confuse the different normative
grammars of each mathematical language game with the normative grammar of
classical logic that guides the language games of western logico-formal mathemat-
ics. Hence, normativity is not synonymous with logico-formal coherence. A bridge
may or may not fall, not because the algorithms or calculations used in its construc-
tion respected or transgressed the principles of classical logic, but because they
were or were not followed correctly or for other unforeseen reasons. Between the
well-founded or ill-founded foundations of bridges and architectural buildings and
the supposed logical-formal foundations of Western mathematics there is an impass-
able abyss, but one that would not even need to be bridged. You can be an excellent
demonstrator of theorems, but not even know how to build a toy bridge… Conversely,
you can be an exceptional architect who designs and builds bridges and aqueducts –
as Eupalinos did, in the sixth century BC – and not knowing how to demonstrate a
theorem of the most elementary or verbally and rigorously enunciate the definition
of angle. I think, then, that the central misunderstanding that runs through our entire
discussion concerns the role that classical binary logic, and therefore contradiction,
plays in the effective ways of inventing and practicing mathematics in different
fields of human activity.
LW (Wittgenstein, PI-125, our italics) – It is not the business of philosophy to
resolve a contradiction by means of a mathematical or logico-mathematical
discovery, but to render surveyable the state of mathematics that troubles us a the
state of affairs before the contradiction is resolved. (And in doing this one is not
sidestepping a difficulty). Here the fundamental fact is that we lay down rules, a
technique, for playing a game, and that then, when we follow the rules, things don’t
turn out as we had assumed. So that we are, as it were, entangled in our own rules.
This entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand: that is, to survey. It
throws light on our concept of meaning something. For in those cases, things turn
out otherwise than we had meant, foreseen. That is just what we say when, for
example, a contradiction appears: “That’s not the way I meant it”. The civil status
of a contradiction, or its status in civic life that is the philosophical problem.
Mosapyr – I think what LW is trying to say is the same as Raju: that we should
throw away the pure, ideal, intelligible, metaphysical and ‘teleotheological’ lad-
der that gives us access to the logical world of ‘frictionless ice’ and face, without
fear, the problems and challenges posed by the “civil world” of forms of life, the
“civil world” of human activities, the praxeological “civil world”, which Raju,
unfortunately, does not seem to distinguish from the “empirical world”.
Oiepé – What would LW mean by the expression “civil world”? He also uses
it in another passage of his work, this time in connection with mathematics:
LW (RFM-IV-2, 1998, our italics) – I want to say: it is essential to mathemat-
ics that be made civil uses of its signs as well. It is the use outside mathematics
and, so, the meanings of signs, that makes the sign-games into mathematics.
Mosapyr – I think what LW meant by this is that a mathematical language
game is not characterized by the types of objects or beings that participate in it,
but by what we can do algorithmically – that is, mechanically – with them in a
normative game of language. And, in this sense, knitting a blouse can be seen as
a mathematical language game, even though the objects that participate in it, that
is, threads, needles, etc., have nothing to do with objects or concepts of Western
logical-formal mathematics. And what can legitimately characterize it as a math-
ematician is the existence of a knitting algorithm that, if followed to the letter,
allows us to make a blouse, according to the previously planned model.
Oiepé – I see that this new image of mathematics allows for an unlimited and
unusual expansion of what both Lakatos and Perminov understood by “informal
mathematics”, as well as what Raju calls “normal mathematics” (“mathematics
plus facts”), as opposed to “formal mathematics”, that is, to mathematics
abstracted or independent of the facts of the empirical world. I understand that
LW extends mathematical language practices or games to the entire “civil world”,
which I identify with the world of fields of human activity, that is, with forms
of life.
Irundyk – I conclude from our therapeutic conversation about the possibilities
of deconstructing the supposed uniqueness and universality of Western logical-
formal mathematics and the philosophies that support it that an indiscipline ther-
apeutic- decolonial way of educating and educating oneself mathematically, of
researching in mathematics education and of forming educators need neither a
philosophy of mathematics nor a philosophy of mathematics education.
Mbó – I disagree! We need both an anti-colonizing philosophy of mathematics
and an anti-colonizing philosophy of education!
Mokoi – Don’t you think, Mbó, that we would need to discuss the implications
that an anti-colonial way of philosophizing would bring to the classroom?
TM (Macaulay, 1835) – I have travelled across the length and breadth of India
and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have
seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such high caliber, that I do
not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very back bone
of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I pro-
pose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the
Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their
own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become
what we want them, a truly dominated nation. […] Higher studies … [need a]
language not vernacular… What then shall that language be? One-half of the
committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recom-
mend the Arabic and Sanscrit… I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic;
but I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read
translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works… I am quite ready
to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have
never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good
European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.
CKR (Raju, 2011b, p. 21–22) – In India, Western soft power and the colonial
education project began with Macaulay in 1835. The BJP6 election manifesto for
the previous election stated that Macaulay admired Indian civilization, but
wanted to “break [its] very backbone”, by introducing English education. The
BJP manifesto stated “India’s prosperity, its talents and the state of its high moral
society can be best understood by what Thomas Babington Macaulay stated in
his speech of February 02, 1835, in the British Parliament. Such falsehoods do
not help fight academic imperialism: a true understanding of the causes is needed
to cure the malaise. Macaulay, a racist to the core, and an admirer of other racists
like Locke and Hume (both of whom he cites in his infamous Minute of 1835),
had nothing nice to say about Indian civilization or the then- prevailing system of
Sanskrit and Arabic education in India.
Mbó – Help me Lord!7: Christian-theological mathematics that exponentially
raised to Christian-theological mathematics education resulted in the only text-
book of our Western mathematics education: the Bible, that is, “Euclid”! Down
with Bishop Sardinha!8
OA9 – Down with all the importers of canned counsciousness. The palpable
existence of life. And the pre-logical mentality for Mr. Lévy-Bruhl to study. We
6
BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is one of the two main political parties that have ruled the Republic
of India since 2014. It is a right-wing nationalist party that from 2020 has become the largest politi-
cal party in the country in terms of representation in national parliament and state legislatures
7
The interjection originally used in Portuguese is “Cruz credo” (“Cross Creed”). Originating in
Catholic- Christian culture, it literally means “I believe in the cross.” It is used to express fear,
disgust, or repugnance at something. (https://www.significados.com.br/cruz-credo/).
8
This is Pero Fernandes Sardinha (1496–1556), a Portuguese theologian who was provider and
vicar general in India and the first bishop of Brazil. The ship in which he was returning to Brazil
on July 16, 1556 sank in the Coruripe River, in the State of Alagoas. The crew were captured by
the Caeté Indians who literally killed and ate them.
9
Excerpts from the Cannibalist Manifesto (ANDRADE, 1928) by the Brazilian writer Oswald de
Andrade. Ironically decolonial, the manifesto was a reaction of Brazilian modernist artists to cul-
tural colonization, at the same time that European modernist artists began to criticize the cultural
values and standards of Western civilization. It was published in 1928, after the Dada Manifestos
by the German writer Hugo Ball and the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara and the Surrealist Manifesto
by the French writer André Breton.
want the Carib10 Revolution. Greater than the French Revolution. The unification
of all productive revolts for the progress of humanity. Without us, Europe
wouldn’t even have its meager declaration of thr rights of man. […] We never
permitted the birth of logic among us. […] Down with the truth of missionary
peoples, defined by the sagacity of a cannibal, the Viscount of Cairu11: – It’s a lie
told again and again. But those who cames here weren’t crusaders.12 They were
fugitives from a civilization we are eating, because we are strong and vindictive
like the Jabuti.13
Irundyk – These important clarifications helped to reinforce my point of view
that a decolonizing school mathematics education does not need an anti-coloniz-
ing philosophy neither of mathematics nor of mathematics education, but only a
therapeutic- cannibalist philosophizing that clarifies and problematizes the
effects and affections – environmental, political, legal, technological, ideologi-
cal, ethnic, ethical, aesthetic, etc. – of carrying out mathematical practices – that
is, of language games aimed at fulfilling normative purposes – on the different
forms of life in the contemporary world.
Mosapyr – This speech reverberates Oswald de Andrade’s cannibalist cry – con-
tained in his way of deconstructing the false binary opposition “tupi or not tupi, that
is the question”14 imposed by Shakespearean Hamlet on the colonized peoples of
Abya Yala lands15 – and the therapeutic cry16 that LW launches against Frazer’s
10
Caraíba designates both one of the first indigenous communities with which the Portuguese
came into contact in Brazil, and a linguistic family to which several Brazilian tribes belonged.
11
José da Silva Lisboa, nineteenth-century Brazilian liberal economist who supported the expul-
sion of the Jesuits from Brazil by the Marquis of Pombal.
12
Portuguese coin made of gold or silver.
13
Reptile that inhabits Brazilian forests; in some indigenous cultures, represents perseverance and
strength.
14
Third sentence of the Cannibalist Manifesto (ANDRADE, 1928). The next sentence is: “Against
all catechesis!”.
15
Term used by the Guna indigenous people – who inhabit the territories of Panama and Colombia –
to refer to the continent where they lived since before the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans.
“Abya Yala” comes from the words “Abe” (blood) and “Yala” (space, territory), etymologically
meaning “land in full maturity” or “land of vital blood.” The term is also used as an appeal and
support for the autonomy and epistemic decolonization of indigenous populations, following the
example of the Guna Revolution of 1925. Even after the clarification of the historiographical con-
troversy surrounding the attribution of the name America to the lands of Abya Yala, it was the
female version of the name “Américo” that ended up naming the new continent, as Martin
Waldseemüller attests, in whose hands a letter from Bartolomeu Marchionni had fallen, telling the
following fake news that ended up deciding the name of the new continent: “Currently, the parts of
the Earth called Europe, Asia and Africa have already been fully explored and another part was
discovered by Amerigo Vespuccio, as can be seen in the accompanying maps. And as Europe and
Asia are named after women, I see no reason why we cannot call this part Amerige, that is, the land
of Amerigo, or America, in honor of the sage who discovered it.” (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Abya_Yala); (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americo_Vespucci); (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Bartolomeu_Marchionni)
16
Irundyk speaks with the conviction that the whole of LW’s work – which has as its emblematic
decolonial mark the therapeutic-grammatical critique he directs to the monumental work entitled
colonizing scientistic dogmatism. This therapeutic-cannibalist philosophizing is

not a form of problematization that could be seen as ideologically or doctrinally
oriented, nor supposedly neutral, pluralist or multicultural, but a problematization
committed to a vital political-praxeological pan-ethics oriented towards the
extinction of inequalities and discrimination and for the promotion of a dignified,
democratic and sustainable life for all lives and forms of life on the planet.
Mokoi – I agree and add that from the algorithmic-praxeological perspective of
our decolonial critique of Western logical-formal mathematics, mathematics in the
plural are no longer seen as any kind of linguistic or logical-symbolic-formal
narratives or metanarratives and are seen as a multiplicity of algorithmic,
autonomous, complete, independent and non-competing cultural practices that
prove capable of solving a set of normative social problems that require such
practices to function as a standard of rectification, not of themselves, but of the
iteration of themselves. That is why such practices are not open to rectification.
Opá kó mbó – Following this line of reasoning, I could say, for example, that
counting practices vary not only depending on the objects to be counted, but also on
the guiding purposes of counting, on the available mediating elements, etc.: practices
of counting fish are obviously distinct from practices of counting the amount of
lightning that falls in a given geographic region, in a given time interval. Counting
practices for the same object may also vary depending on the forms of life in which
they are carried out: fish counting practices vary among different indigenous
communities and may differ from those practiced by fishing industries, environmental
groups, etc. All these practices also differ from those invented by the community of
professional mathematicians to count finite or infinite abstract number sets, random
events, etc. I remembered a speech by Olo Wintiyape, an indigenous Guna from
Colombia:
OW – (Olo Wintiyape apud Tamayo, 2017, p. 93) – We don’t have a generic stan-
dard for establishing correspondence relationships, as in Western mathematics, but
we establish correspondence relationships just like you do. However, these relation-
ships cannot be independent of the quality of the object because, in the Guna
The Golden Bough, from the Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer (1966) – can be seen not
exactly as a philosophy or a new philosophy, but as a (self)therapeutic philosophizing about a set
of philosophical problems, among them, the basic problem of language (Miguel & Tamayo, 2020).
The core of LW’s (2011) critique falls on the scientistic assumption that guides Frazer’s Whig
historiographical-anthropological narrative, which leads him to construct a false image of Nemi’s
practice of succession of the priesthood, which is produced through an illegitimate mechanism of
‘scientification’ that transforms a dogmatic- religious practice of a symbolic-ritualist nature into a
scientific hypothesis open to empirical verification or refutation […] LW’s objection to the
Frazerian desire to scientifically explain a dogmatic-religious practice is from the the same nature
as his objection to Frazer’s inverse desire to dogmatically explain a scientific hypothesis for which
it is possible to accumulate a set of empirical evidence that reinforces or refutes it (Miguel et al.,
2020, p. 518). The colonizing character of Frazer’s work can be equated with that of the British
historian Thomas Macaulay, from which Frazer borrows the epigraph and literary style for
his work.
cosmovision, classification is vital to know the world. This means that, even with
this similarity, there are, above all, differences that prevent us from saying that our
counting practices can be seen as numerical systems, just as the West understands
this concept that even I would not be able to explain what it really means.
CT (Tamayo, 2017, p. 243) – Such usage follows the rules of the grammar of
their culture and not the grammar of the counting practice of school mathematics.
Words that describe counting practices are related to the qualities of the objects
involved in counting. According to Dule grammar, a description of the quality of
countable objects is a way of knowing the world. The act of telling is seen as
cosmogonic, that is, as a base of historical, botanical, theological, agricultural and
artistic knowledge. On the other hand, the practice of waga counting, as it is used in
school, refers to the action of counting the number of elements in a set of objects. In
other words, in several academic mathematics texts we will find that counting is
carried out by successively corresponding to an object in a collection, a number of
the natural succession.
Mokoi – What Tamayo describes also points us to the implications for human and
non-human lives generated by this way of conceiving mathematics. We are
experiencing the extinction of all forms of life around us, especially indigenous,
riverside, quilombola, black and Amazonian life forms with all their cosmovisions.
And these ways of philosophizing that I think are echoed in the transgressive legacy
of LW come to postpone the end of the world, as Ailton Krenak (2020), a Brazilian
indigenous of the Krenak people says.
Opá kó mbó – An identity that is neither absolute nor relative, neither local nor
universal, neither true nor false, neither rational nor irrational, neither logical nor
ideological, of a mathematics – that is, what characterizes, singularizes, defines, and
differs from all other mathematics – it is not determining, decisively or
unconditionally from the order of the historical, the spatiotemporal, the territorial,
the geopolitical, the contextual, the communitarian, or from the ethno-community
identity, but actually from the order of the algorithmic-praxeological, from the
iterable in different temporalities, spatialities and contextualities, that is, from the
order of technical reproducibility and the desire for unequivocal and unambiguous
control of the actions and interactions of the participants of an algorithmic-normative
language game. In fact, it is always good to remember that a mathematical practice
is unequivocal, but not univocal, because it is always possible to achieve the same
normative purpose through different algorithms.
Oiepé – By the way, it’s always good to remember that Joy is the casting out
nines!, as Oswald de Andrade told us in his 1928 Cannibal Manifest (Andrade, 1928).
Mbó – It is always good to remember that, since a calculation endowed with the
power to verify the correctness of the application of another calculation is assumed,
the “casting out nines rule” is nothing but a “fake news” that nothing proofs… Joy
is the proof of itself!
Irundyk – It is true! But it is also true that the joy of some is almost always the
sadness of the majority. Therefore, it can always be cannibalically evaluated and
rectified on a case-by-case basis. That’s why we are cannibals! ASÉ O’U TORYBA
‘ARA ÎABI’ÕNDUARA!17
Acknowledgments We thank the researcher João José R. L. de Almeida at the University of

Campinas (Brazil) for the first translation of this text into English. We thank Eduardo de Almeida
Navarro, professor at the University of São Paulo for translating the title of this chapter into the
ancient Tupi language.
References
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methods and meaning. Translation edited by S. H. Gould. Dover Publications, Inc.
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upenn.edu/library/Andrade_Cannibalistic_Manifesto.pdf
Barbosa, L. A. (1956). Curso de Tupi antigo. Livraria São José. Available from: http://etnolin-
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Frege, G. (1960). The foundations of arithmetic: A logico-mathematical inquiry into the concept of
number. Translated by J.L. Austin. Second Revised Edition. Harper & Brothers.
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Mill, J. S. (2009). A system of logic. Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
17
Aphorism “We eat every joy of every day” written in the ancient Tupi language (Barbosa, 1956,
p. 9). “Currently, more than 160 languages and dialects are spoken by indigenous peoples in Brazil.
[…] Before the arrival of the Portuguese, however, in Brazil alone this number must have been
close to a thousand. In the colonization process, the Tupinambá language, as it is the most spoken
language along the Atlantic coast, it was incorporated by a large part of the settlers and missionar-
ies, being taught to the indigenous people in the missions and recognized as the General Language
or Nheengatu. Until today, many words of Tupi origin are part of the vocabulary of Brazilians.”
Contemporary Brazilian linguists often refer to it as a large “linguistic trunk”, alongside Macro-Jê
and 19 other language families that do not present sufficient degrees of similarities to be able to be
grouped into trunks (https://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/L%C3%ADnguas).
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Philosophie, 42(167), 500–508.
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as biased metaphysics. Science and Culture, 77(7–8), 274–279.
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Multiversity & Citizens International.
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Tamayo, C. (2017). Vení, vamos hacamar el mundo hasta que te asustes: uma terapia do desejo de
escolarização moderna. PhD Thesis. Universidade Estadual de Campinas.
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by Gertrude E.M. Anscombe, Peter M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Rev. 4th ed.
P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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J. J. R. L. Bilíngue. Deriva.
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Almeida JJRL Bilíngue ed. Ger-Port. http://www.psicanaliseefilosofia.com.br/textos/
InvestigacoesFilosoficas-Original.pdf
Chapter 19
Mathematics Education and Ubuntu
Philosophy: The Analysis of Antiracist
Mathematical Activity with Digital
Technologies
Maurício Rosa
19.1 Introduction
We begin by presenting what we understand by “mathematics education,” because

this act of educating is concerned with “[…] the developing and the nurturing for
development, including in this process the ways of intervening, so that nutrition is
satisfied and strengthens a direction, which is that of development” (Bicudo, 2003a,
p.33, my translation1). In other words, we must develop ourselves to evolve as
human beings, and, therefore, we understand that, initially, we need to recognize
everyone as different/diverse and assume this difference/diversity without catego-
rizing people into what arbitrarily may be considered as “normal” or even not.
According to Davis (2013, p.1):
We live in a world of norms. Each of us endeavors to be normal or else deliberately tries to
avoid that state. We consider what the average person does, thinks, earns, or consumes. We
rank our intelligence, our cholesterol level, our weight, height, sex drive, bodily dimensions
along some conceptual line from subnormal to above average. We consume a minimum
daily balance of vitamins and nutrients based on what an average human should consume.
Our children are ranked in school and tested to determine where they fit into a normal curve
of learning, of intelligence. Doctors measure and weigh them to see if they are above or
below average on the height and weight curves. There is probably no area of contemporary
life in which some idea of a norm, mean, or average has not been calculated. To understand
the disabled body, one must return to the concept of the norm, the normal body. So much of
writing about disability has focused on the disabled person as the object of study, just as the
study of race has focused on the person of color. But as with recent scholarship on race,
1
“[…] o desenvolver e o nutrir para o desenvolvimento, incluindo nesse processo os modos de
intervir para que a nutrição se dê a contento e fortaleça uma direção, que é a do
desenvolvimento.”
M. Rosa (*)
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
382 M. Rosa
which has turned its attention to whiteness and intersectionality, I would like to focus not so
much on the construction of disability as on the construction of normalcy. I do this because
the “problem” is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is
constructed to create the “problem” of the disabled person.
Moreover, this very “problem” is not with people with disabilities only, nor with
black people, neither whomsoever. The problem actually relies on how we create or
“calculate” the sense of normality. That is, as Frankenstein (1983) asks us, Which
perspective do we build or “calculate” normality from? What interests with? Who
does possibly care about this normality? Who is interested in this “calculation”? So,
it is through mathematical calculation that we establish normality, but the reference
to affirm what is and what is not normal is under a white, Eurocentric, male-
heterosexual, and “without disabilities” standards. For example, the idea of estab-
lishing a mask of beauty through the golden ratio seems to forget the different,
ignoring the massive amount of people, who would not fit in, as well as what it may
mean to each of them not to fit in. We need to think about how to bring mathematics
to help thinking about these issues of values, ethics, and meanings of standards.
Our focus is on educating through mathematics, on progressing as a person/
people, and on understanding this mental, habitual, ideological, unconscious, or
extremely conscious calculation. By “progressing,” we assume the dynamic process
as a human being/as human beings, not materially as within the capitalistic perspec-
tive. Therefore, progressing needs to be understood as a common good, a social
good, promoting freedom for all. Freedom to think, act, and learn is a political act:
such act can be intentionally practiced in mathematics classes, once we all need to
progress mathematically, that is, learn to measure and, above all, progress through
mathematics. That is, we should learn to measure the common good, the social
good, promoting a variety of materializations of freedom(s) for all without making
anyone feel out of place.
In other words, as professionals acting in the mathematics education field, we
need to educate mathematically aiming at what really matters to educate through
mathematics (Rosa, 2008, 2018). Thus, “mathematics,” capitalized, disciplinary,
powerful, unique, and finished (Rosa & Bicudo, 2018) needs to be transgressed and
transformed into a “strange mathematics.” We need to update our perception in
order to highlight a new perception of their concept of mathematics, the one which
makes sense, that is, discussing the mathematics (with lowercase letters (Rosa &
Bicudo, 2018), which allow us to understand differences among people, under-
standing the value of the other that happens to emerge in a resistance space to preju-
dice, discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, and racism. According to Louro
(2021, p.91, my translation2):
2
“A resistência não será mais procurada apenas naqueles espaços explicitamente articulados como
políticos. Por certo não se negará a importância de espaços ou movimentos que, declaradamente,
se colocam no contraponto da imposição de normas heterossexuais, [brancas e androcêntricas] mas
se passará a observar também outras práticas e gestos (ensaiados de outros tantos pontos) como
capazes de se constituir em políticas de resistência.”
19 Mathematics Education and Ubuntu Philosophy: The Analysis of Antiracist… 383
Resistance [the attempt to prevent racism, for instance] will no longer be sought only in
those spaces explicitly articulated as political. Certainly, the importance of spaces or move-
ments that, avowedly, are placed in the counterpoint of the imposition of heterosexual,
[white and androcentric] norms will not be denied, but other practices and gestures
(rehearsed from as many points) will also be observed as capable of constitute resistance
policies.
The rehearsing can take place in education spaces with teachers who teach math-
ematics or who will teach mathematics in the future (initial education), in order to
start philosophically “queering” the curriculum, the pedagogies, the very taught
“mathematics,” and the so called “one that must be taught” from nowadays. Such a
rehearsing for resistance can reach and alter educational spaces through the insub-
ordination of practices based, for example, on epistemological reflections about
what mathematics is being taught, how it has been taught, and through what
approach.
The point hereby is constituting a disposition for the non-conformation with cer-
tain given terms and for the refusal to adjust oneself to social impositions com-
monly taken as “natural.” It is important to ask, for example, how can education
with mathematics teachers promote reflections that support the fight against com-
pulsory heterosexuality, misogyny, ageism, prejudice against people with disabili-
ties, and, as the focus of this chapter, racism from the teachers? How can these
reflections reach educational spaces, in order to produce an antiracist mathematics
education? How to create activities, environments, and resources that come to dis-
rupt, transgress, and provoke political and social reflections like this one? Reflections
that will “ubuntu” mathematics? How to think of and foster a mathematics, that is
for everyone, of everyone, with everyone, that is not done individually, that needs
the other, and that needs an “us”? A mathematics that provides the understanding of
the difference of skin color, race, and ethnicity, as just one more difference and that
values it as one of the ways of being, in order to understand that there is no human
group falling out of this these differences among their integrants.
What are those differences for? Do they really matter?
Therefore, our initial “estrangement” (or questioning confrontation) takes place
as we perceive the need for a more fruitful dialogue about politics and society in the
initial and continuing education with teachers of mathematics, because it seems to
us that there is a habitus (Bourdieu, 1991a, b) of mathematics classes regarding
about what should be taught, what in fact should be mathematics or what should be
named mathematics and what it means in society. This habitus (Bourdieu, 1991a, b)
presents to us a way of understanding mathematics fundamentally as a mechanical
structure of calculations and exercises, of closed problems resolution, and of a
method of applying formulas and having nothing to do with any social-political
matters regarding sex, gender, and sexuality, as well as with disability and age, and,
for matters of this chapter, with race issues. There is, in my view, a focus centered
on mathematical contents historically constituted and evidenced as essential in a
mathematics class, leaving aside the understanding of “why” were these “contents”
picked? Where do they conduce us? Why were they constituted in the present way?
Who did bring them to the classroom? And finally, and most relevant, How do I
384 M. Rosa
transform my mathematics class? How can I make mathematics itself strange?

These considerations are what assign intentionality to this research, as they are
investigated, theorized, destabilized, and possibly transgressed.
The experience with digital technologies (TD) was one of the possible paths we
chose to take. It reveals different crossroads in providing huge diversity and possi-
bilities for thinking, reflection, and criticism. From this perspective, in Rosa (2008,
p.52, my translation3) it is already possible to glimpse the perspective that:
[…] the cybernetic world enhances the vision of modern physics of unconnected time/
space, represented by Castells (2005) as a space of flows, in addition to highlighting the
idea of multiple identities translated into online identities. This makes me think about the
changes in conceptions of time, space, identity that have been taking place and that are now
more evident with the information age, in which the Internet is a prominent actor.
In other words, Rosa (2008) and Rosa and Lerman (2011) highlight the role of
DT as potentiators of identity performance, because they investigated how the con-
struction of online identities is shown, through the RPG (role-playing game) online
to the teaching and learning of definite integral (mathematical concept of differen-
tial and integral calculus), for example. In their research, they consider the perform-
ing practice with the Online RPG as “the playful process in this online mathematics
education situation [, which] calls for understanding mathematical knowledge in
interaction with the setting, as a social construction” (Rosa & Lerman, 2011, p.83).
In this way, the construction of identities shows itself in transformation, immersion,
and agency (Rosa, 2008) since these actions emerged from the identity perfor-
mances unveiled in the digital environment.
In Rosa (2008), it is possible to posit that the performance, the creation, and the
construction of identities both in the RPG and in the world also take place through
the construction of bodies. The construction of bodies in the world is reinforced by
Dumas (2019, p. 2, my translation4) when referring to the conceptual construction
of the “black body,” because, according to the author:
The colonizers’ resolution of this issue was based, in a way, on a definition of the body
inventing a race, not everyone’s, but the people to be enslaved. For this, the list of criteria
already applied in Greece, for example, was not used. But the criterion based exclusively on
the particularity of the African people: their territorial origin and the body defined by skin
color, to the black phenotype.
3
“[…] mundo cibernético potencializa a visão da física moderna de tempo/espaço não desvincula-
dos, representado por Castells (2005) como espaço de fluxos, além de evidenciar a ideia de identi-
dades múltiplas traduzidas em identidades online. Isso me faz pensar nas mudanças de concepções
de tempo, espaço, identidade que vêm acontecendo e que agora são mais evidenciadas com a era
da informática, na qual a Internet é ator proeminente.”
4
“A resolução dessa questão por parte dos colonizadores foi pautada, de certa forma, numa
definição de corpo inventando uma raça, não a de todos, mas a do povo a ser escravizado. Para isso
não foi usado o elenco de critérios já aplicados na Grécia, por exemplo. Mas, o critério baseado
exclusivamente na particularidade do povo africano: a sua origem territorial e o corpo definido pela
cor da pele, ao fenótipo negro.”
In this way, the fabrication of bodies does not go beyond the playfulness of a
game but permeates the intention of a group, its desires, and interests. According to
Louro (2021, p. 80, my translation5):
The bodies considered “normal” and “common” are also produced through a
series of artifacts, accessories, gestures, and attitudes that society arbitrarily estab-
lished as adequate and legitimate. We all use artifices and signs to present ourselves,
to say who we are and who others are.
However, who is interested in defining what is normal? How to define this nor-
mality? What are bodies that matter? This last question was inspired by Butler
(2019) whose book has the title “Bodies that Matter: on the discursive limits of sex.”
Identities are also shaped by bodies, which are conditioned by artifacts, acces-
sories, gestures, and attitudes, which can remarkably transgress spaces and strongly
evidence freedom, that is, the meaning of politics itself (Arendt, 2002). In this bias,
in terms of education and mathematics education linked to re-signifying bodies, we
believe that DT can also become artifices and signs of the constitution of these bod-
ies, present ourselves, and carry out identity performances, in order to learn from
these performances, respecting differences, understanding them. Increasingly, this
learning happens with DT, which are already mobile and ubiquitous (Rosa &
Caldeira, 2018). Also, DT are considered to enhance the constitution of knowledge
(Rosa, 2018), mainly because they present a multimodal language, which favors the
feasibility and possibility of thinking of and perceiving themselves as transgressors,
as enabling different imaginary, constructed, and invented realities.
In addition, we understand that mathematics education can highlight necessary
dimensions for humanitarian development, both the political and social dimensions.
This can be evidenced in this act of education, that is, the act of development which
mathematics is taken as a reflective resource, language, and/or field of study articu-
lated with digital technologies (DT).
Thus, we show in this chapter how mathematics education can encourage/pro-
voke the understanding/constitution of the social responsibility of students in the
face of social issues, such as structural racism, which consistently permeates the
majority of our realities, including the educational reality. In this way, we analyze
an antiracist mathematical activity with digital technologies that discusses the diver-
sity of skin colors as something that belongs to each one and everybody at the same
time, as a structure that connects us. Regarding this, we use the African philosophy
Ubuntu, which does not conceive the existence of a being independent of the other,
but of a “being” that thinks, acts, and lives with others, be-ing-becoming, that is, a
be-ing-becoming that promotes a transformation in reality from its agency with oth-
ers, with nature, with life. For some people, the central idea of this philosophy may
seem to be ignoring human individuality, focusing efforts on the social, and
disregarding subjectivity. But that’s not what happens, the Ubuntu philosophy
5
“Os corpos considerados “normais” e “comuns” são, também, produzidos através de uma série de
artefatos, acessórios, gestos e atitudes que uma sociedade arbitrariamente estabeleceu como ade-
quados e legítimos. Todos nós nos valemos de artifícios e de signos para nos apresentarmos, para
dizer quem somos e dizer quem são os outros.”
386 M. Rosa
makes it clear that subjectivity is important and that each one assumes their respon-
sibility and performs their actions according to their desires and conceptions, a self-
centered conception. However, it is different from the individualism we know. It
goes beyond the individual/collective duality because the Ubuntu philosophy sig-
nals that there is an interconnection among human existences, assuming the integ-
rity of these existences as a premise.
Thus, in the first section, we highlight the hegemonic historicity of white bodies
in society, in mathematics, and in the ways of doing mathematics, discussing this
white hegemony and situating our issue in terms of structural racism. Then, we
moved on to digital technologies, focusing mainly on possibilities of educational
and mathematical educational discussion about racism and its interconnections.
Moreover, we present and apply the Ubuntu philosophy as a theoretical contribution
to support our analysis. We first highlight the intersections of this philosophy with
educational possibilities, and we show how mathematics education can help to
understand the conceptions of this philosophy. In view of this, we present hereby
one definition for the so-called antiracist mathematical activities with DT, which
consists of:
Mathematical-Activities-with-Digital-Technologies [that] can be developed considering
cultural aspects of a given context. These activities consider Digital Technologies (DT)
participants in the cognitive process, that is, DT are not mere auxiliaries, they are not con-
sidered tools that expedite or motivating source of the educational process, exclusively.
They condition the production of mathematical knowledge. (Rosa & Mussato, 2015, p.23,
my translation6)
That is, according to Rosa (2020) more than tools, DTs are taken as resources,
processes, and environments of a destining of revealing, as a revelation of what can
be created, imagined, and discovered. In addition, these mathematical activities
with DT assume an adjective which is the word “antiracist,” precisely because we
consider the political field to which they are linked, because this is understood as the
social space where the struggle takes place through speech and action, that is:
Knowledge of the social world and, more precisely, the categories which make it possible,
are the stake par excellence of the political struggle, a struggle which is inseparably theo-
retical and practical, over the power of preserving or transforming the social world by pre-
serving or transforming the categories of perception of that world. (Bourdieu, 1991a,
b, p.236)
Thus, we theoretically analyze the proposal of an antiracist mathematical activity

with DT, to answer our research question “how to discuss racism in a mathematics
class with Digital Technologies in a way that mathematical concepts support the
discussion?” Therefore, we thought that an antiracist mathematical activity with DT
provokes discussions about skin color and think through mathematics about socially
6
“Atividades-Matemáticas-com-Tecnologias-Digitais [que] podem ser desenvolvidas conside-
rando aspectos culturais de um determinado contexto. Essas atividades consideram as Tecnologias
Digitais (TD) partícipes do processo cognitivo, ou seja, as TD não são meras auxiliares, não são
consideradas ferramentas que agilizam ou fonte motivadora do processo educacional, exclusiva-
mente. Elas condicionam a produção do conhecimento matemático.”
constructed ideas like racism. We understand that the analysis of this mathematical
activity based on Ubuntu philosophy can provide important reflections for mathe-
matics teachers and researchers in mathematics education regarding the role of
mathematics in the world and, mainly, the role of mathematics in favor of an antira-
cist movement. It is worth taking into consideration that mathematics is not neutral,
just as our positioning is not neutral. According to Shapiro (2021), Desmond Tutu,
Archbishop Emeritus, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 stated “If you
are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Although you think you have been neutral, you have definitely picked a side for
your on and that was the oppressor’s side. This may also happen, if we take neutral-
ity for not taking position between two parts of a contradiction or taking both sides,
in order to set a balance and try to avoid the contradiction by promoting a triangle
between us and the two parts, because this would be more comfortable to us than
making a decision. From this perspective, we understand that when neutrality per se
seeks balance and equality of conditions and is part of a field of equality of condi-
tions, the act of not choosing, not taking a position, or taking both sides can be
considered neutral. But when this “neutrality” is in a disproportionate field, where
there is a supremacy of power, the act of calling oneself neutral is only a way of
hiding the position already taken, that is, on the side of the oppressor. We must then
reflect on our role as mathematics educators and on our social responsibility and
political hexis and make ourselves aware of historical power struggles (Bourdieu,
1991a, b), specifically related to skin color-bound issues. Recovering the speech of
those who be oppressed in these disputes is necessary and using mathematics to
understand this.
19.2 The Temporality/Spatiality Marked by

a White Mathematics
When we talk about temporality/spatiality, we are closely linked to the idea of his-
toricity, which according to Bicudo (2003b, p.75, my translation7) is:
[…] the feature of being historical – it is founded on the way of being of the pre-sence
(dasein), understood as the human being who always is in the world temporally. […] The
sense of pre-sence (dasein) attributed to this being, who we humanly are, is articulated by
the understanding of what happens, of what happens in the over there, which is spatiality
and temporality constituted in the ways in which one lives the space and the time.
In other words, encompassed by the presence of the human being in the world,
we turn to the ways of being in the world, and among these, we highlight one
7
“[…] caráter de ser histórico – está fundada no modo de ser da pre-sença, entendida como o ser
humano que sempre é no mundo temporalmente. […] O sentido de pre-sença atribuído a este ser
que humanamente somos é articulado pela compreensão do que ocorre, do que se dá no aí que é
espacialidade e temporalidade constituídas nos modos de ele viver o espaço e o tempo.”
388 M. Rosa
specific way: the way called whiteness, which has been said to carry with it, among
other things, the mathematical “truth,” the right, the correct, what is “normal” to
understand, and the “correct” lens through which we read and write the world.
Sometimes, the historically constituted whiteness is not perceived, or assumed,
many times it is even denied. Nonetheless:
This lack of attention to whiteness leaves it invisible and neutral in documenting mathemat-
ics as a racialized space. Racial ideologies, however, shape the expectations, interactions,
and kinds of mathematics that students experience. (Battey & Leyva, 2016, p. 49)
This means that the “mathematics” worked in the school, which is “white”(i.e., a
“white mathematics,” because it is presented as coming from the theoretical formu-
lation of white peoples, of European origin), reinforces the symbolic power
(Bourdieu, 1991a, b) attributed to white men, when it reveals that the origin of theo-
rems, the construction of mathematics as a field and as a human achievement is
fundamentally a consequence of the work of these white men.
There is no emphasis lying on any African peoples or African mathematics at all,
despite very imposing works, such as the architecture of pyramids, for instance.
This non-emphasis silently attributes greater power and valorization to European
achievements and covers the real intention of the subjugating act, as if the subjuga-
tion was a spontaneous process, which “naturally” can be considered as unimport-
ant, not interesting, something that took place unnoticedly, and that has no value or
awareness, that is, a “neutral” act.
Confirming this, Powell (2002, p. 4) reveals:
[…] the mathematics presented in extant mathematical papyri from ancient Egypt most
probably has preserved the mathematical ideas of an African elite. Nevertheless, main-
stream, Eurocentric historians of mathematics have largely discounted these ideas. […] the
importance of Africa’s contribution to mathematics and the central role of that contribution
to the mathematics studied in schools have not received the attention and understanding that
befit them. As an example, documentary evidence of insightful and critical algebraic ideas
developed in ancient Egypt exists, but little of this information has been made available to
students studying mathematics, at any level.
What is recognized is that the enormous contributions of non-European develop-

ment of mathematics have not been credited as deserved. The Arabic numeral sys-
tem, historically written as the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, was carried into
Europe by Muslims/Arabs. It is notable and it is recognized that algebra and trigo-
nometry (which were studied by Arabs) were fundamentally developed by Hindu
mathematicians and astronomers. But the empowerment of the skin color of these
mathematicians is not valued as it should be in math classes. The fact that the math-
ematics curriculum neglects black and brown peoples’ achievements leads us to
infer that mathematics is perceived by all students (blacks, whites, etc.), subjec-
tively, as a legitimate act and cognitive product exclusively done by white.
Furthermore, “mathematics” is, in many cases, empirically identified as a “dif-
ficult subject,” “made for a few ones” and “intended to be understood only by the
intelligent ones.” This increases the symbolic power and the discrepancies it pro-
vokes even more (Bourdieu, 1991a, b), fostering ideological believes about
mathematics itself and about the intrinsic logic of subtracting any black culture
from deserved evaluative positions.
Corroborating this, Kivel (2011, p.282) states:
Our curricula also omit the history of white colonialism as colonialism, and they don’t
address racism and other forms of exploitation. People of color are marginally represented
as token individuals who achieved great things despite adversity rather than as members of
communities of resistance. The enormous contributions people of color have made to our
society are simply not mentioned. For example, Arab contributions to mathematics, astron-
omy, geology, mineralogy, botany, and natural history are seldom attributed to them. The
Arabic numbering system, which replaced the cumbersome and limited Roman numeral
system— along with trigonometry and algebra, which serve as cornerstones of modern
mathematics— were all contributions from Muslim societies. As a result, young people of
color do not see themselves at the center of history and culture. They do not see themselves
as active participants in creating this society.
The fact that young people of color very currently do not consider themselves as
an agent of the historical and cultural process, due to the non-presentation of infor-
mation about black culture in school and other places like media, mainly due to the
absence of this information from the common vocabulary, allows us to affirm that
not feeling part is intrinsic to the idea of structural racism. Structural racism is con-
sidered by Almeida (2021) as a sort of racism transcending the scope of individual
action, which does not require the intention of manifestation and allows legal
responsibility not to materialize, although ethical and political responsibility is not
excluded. Thus, racialized subjects are conceived as members of the social system
surrounded by structural racism, so that the dimension of power stands out in terms
of identifying one group over the other. Notwithstanding, we consider that struc-
tural racism manifests itself through a habitus that, according to Bourdieu
(1991b, p.54):
[…] produces individual and collective practices - more history - in accordance with the
schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which,
deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action, tend
to guarantee the ‘correctness’ of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than
all formal rules and explicit norms.
Rephrasing this idea, once we assume habitus exists and is responsible for pro-
ducing and/or reproducing the practices of an individual and their group or groups,
everyone in these groups would be sharing the same premises and values on which
they produce and/or reproduce these practices and their ways of being. In this sense,
the intention or non-intention to practice or not to practice a racist action is directly
linked not only to the agent’s subjective world but also to the racial structure of his
temporality/spatiality, and what results from the practice of an agent will be the
product of the complex operation that considers in advance the values of the groups
in which the agents belong (Lima, 2019).
Nevertheless, racism is hereby understood as a systematic social-ideological
apparatus that discriminates, having race as a parameter, and its manifestation takes
place through practices (conscious or unconscious) that result in disadvantages or
privileges to each of the antagonistic groups, likewise to the individuals within these
390 M. Rosa
groups, who often happen to be stigmatized or flattered on the cause of the race, in
which they are classified (Almeida, 2021). Thus, according to Kivel (2011, p. 19):
Racism is based on the concept of whiteness - a powerful fiction enforced by power and
violence. Whiteness is a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to
have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justi-
fied by their not being white.
The race, a modern phenomenon in the mid-sixteenth century, gains meaning in

the mercantile expansion, which later transforms the European into the “universal
man” and which, under the contribution of the Enlightenment, materializes the con-
ditions of comparison and classification of the most different human groups, under
criteria mostly conditioned to physical and cultural characteristics. Whiteness
becomes one of the criteria for distinguishing what is civilized from savage, which
would later be called civilized or primitive (Almeida, 2021).
In addition, the ideological perspective of some philosophers reinforces some-
how this approach, for example, the considerations made by the philosopher Hegel
about Africans, who are described as “without history, bestial, and wrapped in
ferocity and superstition.” References to “bestiality” and “ferocity” demonstrate the
trend to depose humanity from black people quite common at the colonial time, by
associating them (including their physical characteristics) and their cultures with
animals or even insects. The science made in the universities then assigned a very
reliable tonic to racism and, therefore, to its process of dehumanization that pre-
ceded discriminatory practices or genocides then and until this day (Almeida, 2021,
p.28–29).
The embargo on dehumanization starts from the religious domain, and there was
a definition of the body based on the idea that the soul would be essential in the
legitimation and qualification of being a human. Thus, religion, in connivance with
the political sphere of the time, invents the criteria that define which group would be
the holder of superiority. The invention of the black body or the animalized, objecti-
fied body contributes to legitimizing an economic project that assumed the human
workforce. The religious doctrine only corroborated this idea, supporting it with the
production of legitimation arguments (Dumas, 2019). Nevertheless, the sciences
also served to support the explanation of dehumanization, according to the classifi-
cation process by race, that is, white skin and tropical climate, according to biology
and geography, would favor the emergence of so-called immoral behaviors, of vio-
lent and lascivious nature, as well as the identification of low intelligence. So, the
closer to nature, the more primitive and the less civilized (Almeida, 2021).
When examining the racist internal structure of mathematics education, it is nec-
essary to discover how we can educate through mathematics, using mathematics to
understand what racism is, how it was disseminated, for what reasons, and with
what interests and to be socially responsible as a proposal and as a way of being,
thinking, and existing that does not exclude, oppress, and dehumanize anyone.
Perhaps, the prevailing force of what we currently live with digital technologies
(DT) can be a fruitful path. If we consider the role of DT in cases such as George
Floyd (BBC NEWS, 2020), for example, we assume that there are possibilities for
change and articulation through communication. That is, although the world is in a
process of continuous technological advancement, it still struggles with issues of
citizenship, a subjective condition for those who, as a member of a State, should be
assured of constant enjoyment of a defined right set, able to allow him to participate
in political life. However, there is still evidence of the absence of social and political
conditions for this, particularly in cases arising from discrimination/prejudice, as
was the case of the American George Floyd, who was murdered in a typically racist
act. In this sense, Floyd’s case mobilized the world in terms of protests against rac-
ism, precisely potentiated by the existence of the internet and all the technological
apparatus that sustains it. For those reasons, we consider that highlighting the pos-
sibilities that are supported by the DT, in relation to social responsibility in terms of
mathematics education, is one of the paths we wish to follow.
19.3 Digital Technologies and Racism: What Does

Mathematics Education Have to Do with It?
Digital technologies have long been studied in the field of education and, in particu-
lar, mathematics education, bringing the potential of the educational experience
with these resources. According to Rosa (2020, p. 3):
The evolution of the digital domain, in the form of the computer network, has been appro-
priated by educators, and from this, the research about the possibilities of digital technolo-
gies (DT) brings to Education in Brazil and worldwide (de Oliveira, 2002; Kenski, 2003;
Laurillard, 2008; Mansur, 2001; Underwood, 2009, among others) and has been conducted
for decades. Specifically, in mathematics education, many studies point to the prominent
potentialities of DT, inserting cyberspace in this context (Bairral, 2002, 2004; Bicudo &
Rosa, 2015; Borba, 2004; Borba & Villarreal, 2005; Burton, 2009; Chronaki & Christiansen,
2005; Simmons, Jones Jr, & Silver, 2004; Zullato, 2007). Cyberspace can enhance the con-
struction of online worlds and identities (Rosa, 2008; Rosa & Lerman, 2011; Rosa &
Maltempi, 2006), as well as enabling the creation of a differentiated time/space for com-
munication, interaction (Bicudo, 2018; Castells, 2003, 2005; Lévy, 2000) and, conse-
quently, education (Hoyos, 2012; Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006).
Thus, these studies represent a wide range of research, which explore, in the field
of mathematics education, issues concerning mathematics, the teaching, and learn-
ing of mathematics, as well as the training of mathematics teachers, in face-to-face
and online modality. These studies in educational terms can open up possibilities for
discussing racism, but they do not effectively do so. In this sense, we want to draw
attention to the large gap that exists regarding research on the potential of DT as
resources that can corroborate the understanding of social responsibility in the face
of racism and also in mathematics classes. For example, society worldwide has
faced a pandemic (Covid-19), and, in the meantime, we believe the pandemic
brought to light the need for education as a foundation for raising awareness of the
social responsibility of each one about the “whole” and the indispensability of a
political stance, which is consistent with the common good. Assuming such
392 M. Rosa
responsibility as a math educator may allow one to understand in advance that

“Trying to solve math problems in an over-dwelled hovel in a slum is very different
than doing so in a spacious, luxurious apartment with a veranda” (Borba, 2021, our
translation). From this perspective, we assume the term “responsibility” as described
in the Abbagnano dictionary of philosophy (2007, p.855, my translation8), that is,
“Possibility of predicting the effects of one’s own behavior and of correcting it
based on such prediction” and, respectively, its adjective, that is, the term “social”
as “That which belongs to society or has in view its structures or conditions”
(Abbagnano, 2007, p.912, my translation9). Thus, the possibility of predicting the
effects of their behavior in relation to society, in this case, in relation to racism, in
view of their structures or conditions, and correcting them is what we seek in edu-
cational terms, specifically, mathematical educational ones.
However, the need for social responsibility does not arise with the pandemic but
is only emphasized by it. Part of society has been questioning itself for some time
in relation to this understanding/constitution of social responsibility, even before the
pandemic. However, now some questions stand out: what is the responsibility of
mathematics education regarding the education of a group of students, belonging to
a postcolonial society based on the process of (im)position of some bodies on hav-
ing access or success in important spaces (depending on whether they are white or
black bodies)? What responsibility do we have/assume in mathematics education in
relation to structural racism (also evidenced during the pandemic)?
From this perspective, as already stated, we assume mathematics education as
the act of educating (oneself) mathematically or educating (oneself) through math-
ematics (Rosa, 2008), which neither suppresses nor displaces the subjects involved
in this act/process. Educators, teachers, students, and others involved in this act/
process make mathematics education, act in relation to mathematics education, and
become mathematics education. Thus, they need to question themselves about the
social responsibility of mathematics education, that is, their own social
responsibility.
In this sense, everyone (me, you, the teacher, the researcher in mathematics edu-
cation, whoever reads this chapter, etc) is part of this. We, as mathematics teachers,
need to perceive this responsibility as the primacy of knowledge and articulate edu-
cational possibilities that contribute to this understanding/constitution of social
responsibility in the mathematics classroom, taking mathematics as a contribution
and digital technologies as a means of enhancing this understanding/constitution.
The DT participation in this process is not limited to the use of them like auxil-
iary objects merely (which would be the appliance of a resource only for fulfilling
instructions, a request or habits, with few or noncritical reflection on what is being
done), but is understood like the experience with DT that is translated as perception,
feeling, reflection, thinking, etc. On the contrary, the participation of DT becomes
8
“Possibilidade de prever os efeitos do próprio comportamento e de corrigi-lo com base em tal
previsão.”
9
“Que pertence à sociedade ou tem em vista suas estruturas ou condições. Neste sentido, fala-se
em ‘ação S.’, ‘movimento S.’, ‘questão S.’. etc.”.
an articulating act under an intentionality which conceives the technological

resource as a participant in the constitution of knowledge. This means that we con-
stitute knowledge with the world, with the digital technologies that are in the world,
and not about the world, alone, so that these technologies simply help us to think
about something (Rosa, 2008, 2018). In this case, for example, we moved from the
evaluation of the Internet as a mere apparatus, as a communication technology, to
the understanding of digitality as a technique, technology, and process of modern
life; in other words, we understand the internet as a participant in a digitally medi-
ated society. That is, we understand the internet as a capital, within a capitalist
regime that seeks profit, but, more than that, it also becomes a symbolic capital and
needs to be critically understood as able to potentialize stigmas or privileges, as well
as interests and objectives of those who rule any hegemony in question, depending
on its conduction (e.g., skin color). This focus places the internet at the heart of
society’s digital transformations and also links it directly to the domain of the soci-
ology of race, ethnicity, and racism. We say this because there is network capital
that shapes a global racial hierarchy varying according to spatial geographies and
the privatization of public and economic life. Internet technologies are central to the
political economy of race and racism, as these technologies nowadays are at the
base of politics and the concept of the capital (as we currently experience capital-
ism). Although we realize that digital transformation marks race and racism, trans-
formation movements often leveraged colorblind racism, be whited racial projects,
white racial frames, and implicit prejudice, that is, among other factors, the implicit
aesthetic promoted many kinds of “white business” (business conducted under the
will, desire, and perspective of white men). On the contrary, it would suffice to say
that each one is important and none is perfect, once there are many prejudicing acts
that happen with the internet, although there are many “important people” that use
it for good things too. Indeed, the study of race and racism in the digital society
must theorize network scale, obfuscation logics, and predatory inclusion mecha-
nisms (McMillan Cottom, 2020). Or even, it should focus its efforts on raising
awareness of diversity and valuing it.
For us, then, it is important focusing on diversity. So, in this chapter, our move-
ment of understanding/constitution of social responsibility in mathematics educa-
tion with digital technologies is in line with what Rosa (2022) proposes in his
research. The author investigated how the process of understanding/constituting the
social responsibility of mathematics teachers in cybereducation has shown itself
through the analysis of cinematographic products. The perspective is linked to the
structural racism that inhabits our reality, including the educational aspects. In this
sense, based on the concept of cybereducation with mathematics teachers (defined
as education seen under different dimensions and which assumes the work with DT
from the perspective of being with, thinking with, and knowing how to do with DT),
Rosa (2022) analyzed a participant of the subject/extension course “Macro/Micro
Exclusions/Inclusions in Mathematics Education with Digital Technologies” held
in 2021 in ERE mode (emergency remote education) at the Federal University of
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Specifically, analyzing one teacher from a group, Rosa
(2022) understands that DT, in this case, cinematographic products, enhanced the
394 M. Rosa
understanding/constitution of the social responsibility of a mathematics teacher.

The teacher was being-with-the-movie, consequently, with the people represented
on the movie when watched and analyzed a specific film about racism. The teacher
lived the experiences of the characters’ lives, and, in this way, the understanding of
the “ubuntu” philosophy happened, without dichotomizing, in the sense of not con-
ceiving the existence of a being independent of the other but of a “being” that thinks,
feels, and experiences with others and with the world. This bridge projected among
mathematics education, digital technologies, and structural racism places us in the
understanding/constitution of social responsibility, which appropriates the experi-
ence with DT in order to sustain itself in the ways of being, thinking, and knowing
how to do it. It is also situated in opposition to racism through a mathematical foun-
dation and through the support of technological resources. So that allows us to go
further, seeking mathematics that can favor this very understanding/constitution.
Before it, we need to discuss one of the theories that are linked to the way in which
we can overcome racism is the African philosophy of Ubuntu.
19.4 Ubuntu Philosophy and Mathematics Education:

Possible Interconnections
We envision a conception of the world, that is, a philosophy that, in our view, breaks
with the Eurocentric and colonial idea of individuality as a primer thing and neces-
sary to win in life and meritocracy as well. We bring up the Ubuntu philosophy,
which becomes an ethical and pedagogical stance that evokes the idea of “being,” in
order to launch itself into existence even before materializing it, however, already
launching itself into this materiality: there is a movement directed to people (each
one with their individuality in direction to others) and the relationships between
them. Each one becomes a be-ing-becoming (Ramose, 2002) marked by uncertainty
once they are anchored in the search for understanding the cosmos in a constant
struggle for harmony. This cosmic harmony encompasses politics, religion, and law,
and those spheres are, by their turn, based on experience and the concept of this very
harmony.
According to Noguera (2012, p.147, my translation10):
Undoubtedly, the idea of ubuntu became widely known through free software for comput-
ers, characterized mainly by the proposal of offering an operating system that could easily
be used by anyone. This essay is not about that; but, of |Ubuntu as a way of life: a possibility
to exist together with other people in a non-egoistic way, an antiracist and polycentric com-
munity existence.
10
“Sem dúvida, a ideia de ubuntu ficou amplamente conhecida através do software livre para com-
putadores, caracterizado principalmente pela proposta de oferecer um sistema operacional que
possa ser utilizado facilmente por qualquer pessoa. Este ensaio não trata disso; mas, de ubuntu
como uma maneira de viver, uma possibilidade de existir junto com outras pessoas de forma não
egoísta, uma existência comunitária antirracista e policêntrica.”
In the same way, our research, even encompassing digital technologies, does not
deal specifically with free software with that name, but the philosophy that portrays
a way of living, a possibility of existing, be-ing-becoming without racism, seeking
to get rid of any forms of discrimination, prejudice and/or selfishness, as well as
perspectives based on a single way of being, of showing oneself, in unique and
absolute terms. This is the perception of mathematics education that we believe
teachers need to assume, discuss, and enact in their classes and perhaps make their
students understand and apprehend it. In our view, it is also linked to the abdication
of an exclusive “mathematics,” a single “mathematics,” finished, disciplinary, as
well as a single way of seeing the world and others (a Eurocentric view, which takes
as an adequate subject: “[ …] a being of civilization, [male-]heterosexual, Christian,
a being of mind and reason” (Lugones, 2014, p. 936)). So, the classroom should be
filled with many kinds of mathematics.
Racism, for example, treats its origins through a Eurocentric vision that has his-
torically signified any indigenous inhabitant out of Europe as nonhuman or less than
a human. This construct contained one of the first epistemic acts of violence, for
those peoples were and often still are perceived as beings absent from culture, living
as beings closer to animals (Moraes & Biteti, 2019). Currently, it is notable that:
[…] racism is always structural, that is, it is an element that integrates the economic and
political organization of society […] it provides meaning, logic and technology for the
reproduction of forms of inequality and violence that shape the contemporary social life.
(Almeida, 2021, p.20–21, author’s emphasis, my translation11)
On the other hand, reflecting on the Ubuntu philosophy becomes the action of
assimilating the place of the decentralized “being” in the global context and seeking
to abandon the legacies of a dominant discourse, understanding/constituting a
knowledge that understands that people are not alone on the planet, much less that
there are privileged societies in cognitive terms, due to coloniality. What constitutes
Ubuntu philosophy is otherness, and thus is what:
[…] it constitutes my relationship with the other, in which the place of man is decentralized,
removing him from the central place, demarcating his relationships with other beings. Thus,
Ubuntu would not be a humanist ethics focused on man, but a way of being/with the other,
with nature, with life. (Moraes & Biteti, 2019, p.138. my translation12)
Also, it is necessary to understand that:

Ubuntu is a be-ing-becoming, a come-to-be-ing-becoming, which promotes a transforma-
tion in reality from its agency with others. In its structure, ubuntu is made in time, p romoting
11
“[…] o racismo é sempre estrutural, ou seja, de que ele é um elemento que integra a organização
econômica e política da sociedade […] fornece o sentido, a lógica e a tecnologia para a reprodução
das formas de desigualdade e violência que moldam a vida social contemporânea.”
12
[…] constitui minha relação com o outro, na qual se descentraliza o lugar do homem, o retirando
do lugar central, demarcando suas relações com outros seres. Assim, o ubuntu não seria uma ética
humanista concentrada no homem, mas um modo de ser/com o outro, com a natureza, com a vida
(Moraes & Biteti, 2019, p.138).
396 M. Rosa
maintenance and transformations as measure of the do-doing, acting in constant continuity

in its being in the world. (Moraes & Biteti, 2019, p.138, my translation13)
We hope that there will be a chance for a new mathematics class developed by
teachers who recognize the other as themselves and who encourage this same rec-
ognition on the part of their students, in order to experience mathematics as a way
of showing it, educating mathematically oneself and, mainly, educating oneself
through mathematics (Rosa, 2008) in the face of situations of racism, for example,
and in favor of recognizing and respecting diversity.
Mathematically, it is important to have as a premise what Ngomane (2019, p.66).
says:
As human beings, we share our planet with 8 million different species, but we ourselves are
pretty unique. With around 200 countries in the world – official number vary – and roughly
6,500 different spoken languages (and with an infinite number of cultural differences), what
we all have in common is this: diversity.
Furthermore, according to Jojo (2018, p.256) “Ubuntu as a philosophy, is a way

of thinking about what it means to be human, and how humans, are connected to
each other or should behave toward others.” Even though we are different people,
we have a responsibility to each other, with well-being, and if you are not well, I am
not well either. I am not without you, I am not without us. The idea of empathy
materializes, not only as putting oneself in someone else’s shoes but considering the
other intrinsically linked to one’s own being. According to Gade (2012, p. 257):
Reality in Ubuntu is informed by the power derived from embracing people’s cultural phi-
losophy (Bopape, 1990). It is an aspect of the African people’s culture. Batswana, Bapedi,
Basotho refers to this culture as ‘botho’, while the Nguni’s (Xhosa’s, Zulu’s, Ndebele’s; and
Swazi groups refer to it as ‘Ubuntu’. For my convenience in this paper, I’ll use Ubuntu. It
embraces concepts like: "Umntu ngumtu ngabantu" which is literally translated as: ‘a per-
son is a person through other people’. This implies that it is through the support from other
people that a person is able to achieve his/ her goals. This reality is therefore based on col-
laboration, togetherness, and working collectively, through which the best results can be
achieved. When this philosophy is well explored and understood by a mathematics teacher,
it culminates in the latter putting maximized effort to ensure that the classroom environ-
ment welcomes students’ errors and questions while it also promotes engagement with
problems posed and boosts their reputation under general.
The adoption of the Ubuntu philosophy can permeate the mathematics class, if
this class is understood/constituted through premises, such as social responsibility,
respect for diversity, and the belonging of being in the world with others. So, Jojo
(2018), for example, studied fifteen 8th grade math teachers from South Africa in
order to understand how their classroom environments and practices were trans-
formed through Ubuntu, in relation to teaching geometry. The study reveals that
teachers have transformed their approach to different math topics to explore
13
“O ubuntu é um ser-sendo, um vir-a-ser sendo, que promove uma transformação na realidade a
partir de seu agenciamento com outrem. Em sua estrutura, o ubuntu se faz no tempo, promovendo
manutenções e transformações na medida em que faz-fazendo, agindo em constante continuidade
no seu estar no mundo.”
diversity in their classrooms and bring each student inclusively to understand the
meaning of interpreting geometric terms with their application through sharing and
modified valuing by each student’s contribution. It is important to highlight here
that the mathematical concepts to be developed, in this case, geometric, depart from
the “universal mathematics,” European, white, and historically (only) Greek. This is
not bad, on the contrary, if I am not without us, Africans are not without Europeans,
and the Europeans shouldn’t be without Africans. In this way, they do not abdicate
the knowledge produced historically, even if the official history does not actually
portray the movements of temporality/spatiality that took place. The annihilation of
knowledge or non-appropriation of it is not defended for us; it is defended by the
recognition of the constitution of black, yellow, red, Latin, and indigenous knowl-
edge, in order to conceive equity and nondiscrimination, non-exclusion, non-
subordination, and non-coloniality (or better, decoloniality). Jojo (2018) argues
about the different types of representations of the human activity of doing mathe-
matics and states that these exist in our surroundings and should be explored for a
meaningful understanding of geometry.
In turn, Osibodu (2020) investigated whether and how young people in sub-
Saharan Africa use mathematics in understanding social issues related to the African
continent. With five young people from sub-Saharan Africa, over a semester, the
author of this research developed her study. She took as a theoretical reference the
decolonial theory from an African perspective, which, according to the author,
encompasses decolonial perspective structures, such as the Ubuntu philosophy that
decenters power. Osibodu’s study (2020) did not focus on learning new mathemat-
ics; rather, it sought to investigate what knowledge young people draw on in their
exploration of social issues. As a result, the research highlights the focus on sub-
Saharan youth’s need to reread and rewrite their African world with and without
mathematics. To encompass these results, young people were invested in rewriting
narratives about the African continent, raising African indigenous knowledge. The
act of rewriting has led to epistemic freedom and cognitive justice – an essential
component of social justice – that corrects the loss of indigenous African knowl-
edge. Despite this, there was still tension in recognizing and accepting indigenous
African forms of knowledge, along with the belief that mathematics taught at their
school was quite neutral.
The traces of coloniality were manifested in Osibodu’s survey (2020), and one of
the phrases expressed by one of the participants was “wherever you see a right
angle, it means a white man has been there” (p. 56), or, that is, this participant’s
mathematical perception of his space made him affirm this and understand the
mathematics produced by his own people, because all houses, for example, were
built for his people in circular forms. In this case, for us, it is a clear example of what
we call ethnomathematics. According to D’Ambrosio (2001) apud Powell (2002,
p. 3-4):
Ethnomathematics encompasses in this reflection on decolonialization and in the search for
real possibilities of access for the subaltern, for the marginalized e for the excluded. The
most promising strategy for education, in societies that are in transition from subordination
to autonomy, is to reestablish the dignity of its individuals, recognizing and respecting their
398 M. Rosa
roots. To recognize and respect the roots of an individual does not mean to ignore and reject
the roots of the other, but, in a process of synthesis, to reinforce one’s own roots. (p. 42,
author’s translation)
Thus, our reflection recognizes different mathematical production ways. We do

not want to substitute the Eurocentric mathematics for others. Notwithstanding, we
aim to produce reflections about ethnomathematics and to relate the way of under-
standing the correlations between possible mathematics and the concept of Ubuntu,
because, as Jojo (2018) declares:
Ubuntu is a unifying concept within South African people culture and thus deserves promi-
nence in the curriculum in all respects. When teachers demonstrate the understanding of the
historical development of mathematics in various social and cultural contexts both in urban
and rural settings, students will not feel threatened and will exercise their both their minds
and confidence in the classroom. Through Ubuntu, the teachers worked as collective
humans with their students, restored their self-worth, and their ways of thinking from hege-
monic structures, and facilitated their ability to articulate what they do and think about in
order to provide a foundation for their productive individual participation in the classroom.
I will also borrow from the Bapedi’ expression that talks to cooperation and solidarity attri-
butes of Ubuntu when they say, "Tau tsa hloka seboka di fenywa ke nare e hlotsa". Literally
explained this means that even a limping buffalo can beat lions without unity. Figuratively,
this implies that unity is strength or simple tasks may remain impossible unless there is
cooperation. In mathematics classrooms an environment of social organization, coopera-
tion, communication; sharing of ideas; and solidarity where students are free to express
themselves without fear of belittling is necessary to improve their performance and bring
them into better understanding of the different concepts. In that environment their critical
thinking skills are enabled, and they learn to ask the ‘why’ and ‘how come’ questions.
(p.259–260)
With that, we started to discuss an antiracist mathematical activity with DT,

which under our interpretation brings significant aspects of the Ubuntu philosophy
weaving the ways of be-ing-becoming with the other, with the we, and with the
mathematical reasoning. This weaving leads us to consider that the student may
perceive diversity and assimilate the humanization of this diversity.
19.5 An Antiracist Mathematical Activity with DT
The antiracist mathematical activity with DT that we present in this chapter was
inspired by the photographic exhibition Humanae carried out by Angélica Dass.
According to the exhibition website, Dass (2022) reveals that:
Humanæ is a photographic work in progress by artist Angélica Dass, an unusually direct
reflection on the color of the skin, attempting to document humanity’s true colors rather
than the untrue labels “white”, “red”, “black” and “yellow” associated with race. It’s a
project in constant evolution seeking to demonstrate that what defines the human being is
its inescapably uniqueness and, therefore, its diversity. The background for each portrait is
tinted with a color tone identical to a sample of 11 x 11 pixels taken from the nose of the
subject and matched with the industrial pallet Pantone®, which, in its neutrality, calls into
question the contradictions and stereotypes related to the race issue. More than just faces
and colors in the project there are almost 4,000 volunteers, with portraits made in 20 differ-
ent countries and 36 different cities around the world, thanks to the support of cultural
institutions, political subjects, governmental organizations and non-governmental organiza-
tions. The direct and personal dialogue with the public and the absolute spontaneity of
participation are fundamental values of the project and connote it with a strong vein of
activism. The project does not select participants and there is no date set for its completion.
From someone included in the Forbes list, to refugees who crossed the Mediterranean Sea
by boat, or students both in Switzerland and the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. At the UNESCO
Headquarters, or at a shelter. All kinds of beliefs, gender identities or physical impairments,
a newborn or terminally ill, all together build Humanae. All of us, without labels.
Through the Humanae project, we observed the possibilities that the diversity
discussed in the project itself could list and favor the understanding/constitution of
social responsibility in the face of racism, precisely, understanding the constitution
of the skin color of each individual without labels and, at the same time, mathemati-
cally common to all.
In this perspective, we investigated a color recognition application (from now on
“app”), and among those found in the gallery of applications for Android and IOS
systems, we chose the app called “Identificação de Cor” (color identification) once
it proved to be user-available with an easy handling interface. In Fig. 19.1, we can
see the app’s interface:
Initially, we have the key “Bloquear Anúncios” (block ads), then “Abrir Ficheiro”
(open file), “Identificação em tempo real” (real-time identification), “Lista de cores”
(color list), and “Criador de cor” (color creator). Our objective with this app (or
other ones that work in the same way) is to be able to proceed like Angélica Dass in
Fig. 19.1 “Identicação de

cor” app interface
400 M. Rosa
her photographic work Humanae and, through that, bring mathematics as a basis for
understanding colors. In other words, with this app, we want to be able to photo-
graph skin tones, using photos of different people’s nose tips (in our case, students’
noses), in order to obtain the digital color recognized by the technological resource.
The app operates by targeting a single pixel right in the middle of the photo and
revealing instantaneously values between 0 and 255 of the basic hues (red, green,
and blue) composed of the color that was recognized.
Our antiracist mathematical activity with DT:
First moment, exposition debate the activity can begin with the presentation of
Dass’ work, generating a debate about the exhibition and mentioning that there is a
clear question of percentages (mathematics) present in the color of each one’s skin.
Second moment, invitation the teacher performs an invitation to do the same that
Dass did but in the classroom. This is “would the class agree to divide into a group
and carry out this color identification?” Attention: regarding the students who are
not willing to participate, the teacher can asking them the reason of participation
refuse. Then, whether the teacher’s awareness-raising argument is not convincing,
or the student’s justification is plausible, the teacher must accommodate these stu-
dents in the groups as a technical reporter, that is, these students will not stop inves-
tigating and thinking together, although they will only not participate in the
photography phase.
Third moment, app’s download regarding the students participating in the pho-
tography phase, it is necessary to form groups, check if at least one student has a
smartphone, and request them to download the “Identificação de Cor” app (or
another app that works in the same way).
Fourth moment, formation of the groups with the app installed, the activity
begins with the formation of groups. A random formation of the groups is recom-
mended, so that racially mixed groups emerge. The group size and selection method
depend on the teacher’s perception and the size of the class, and it would be relevant
to note how many girls, boys, blacks, whites, and different stereotypes existing in
the classroom are compounding each group.
Fifth moment, confirmation of participation and ethical clarifications the
teacher explains the activity and asks if anyone feels uncomfortable taking a photo
of the tip of their noses and the teacher precisely clarifies that not the image of the
person’s face will ever be collected. The focus of the activity will be exclusively on
the color of the nose, of the nose tip.
Sixth moment, request for the activity report and explanation of how to do this
report it is necessary to explain to the group that there will be a report on the
research to be delivered and to reveal procedures to do that ((1) creation of pseud-
onyms; (2) inserting the photos taken by cellphones; (3) using the app to measure
the quantitative of red, green, and blue from each identified color; (4) showing the
calculation of percentages of red, green, and blue from each identified color; (5)
discussing the questions presented by the teacher (a, b, c…l)). It is important that
the teacher reads all activities (until the 13th moment) and uses the app before tak-
ing it to the classroom.
Seventh moment, creation of pseudonyms all participants/students will create
pseudonyms to appear in the report, that is, each color will be identified by a pseud-
onym and not by the name of the subject involved.
Eighth moment, explanation of the reason for the choice of pseudonym also, it
would be important to discuss why each pseudonym was chosen. As a plus, it would
be interesting if the pseudonyms they chose were currently names of popular peo-
ple, who took a stand against racism at some point in history.
Ninth moment, production of pictures the students take a photo of the tip of the
nose of their classmates and capture the cell phone screen, so that the image com-
poses the report. This photo must be taken using the “Identificação de Cor” app in
the “Identificação Em tempo real” mode, as shown in Fig. 19.2.
Before capturing the smartphone screen, each student needs to click on
“Identificar” (identify), so that the screen capture already brings the identified col-
ors, namely: “Cor atual” (current color), “Cor semelhante com nome” (similar color
with name) and Palette RAL. Figure 19.3 provides an example of personal color
identification.
Fig. 19.2 “Identificação

em tempo real” (real-time
identification)
402 M. Rosa
Fig. 19.3 “Cor atual”

(actual color), “Cor
semelhante com nome”
(similar color with name)
and Palette RAL
Tenth moment, internet research about the RGB color system the teacher asks
the group to search about the RGB color system on the internet.
Eleventh moment, reflection on different color systems in order to guide the
search, confront the group with these questions: what does each letter (R, G, and B)
mean? What are the other systems? What are the differences between the systems?
What is the number of levels in the RGB system? The answers are shown in
the report.
Twelfth moment, reproduce the color identified the teacher asks the students
that they reproduce the color identified by the app (identification resource), in the
color creator resource, in order to learn to numerically configure a color using the
RGB system. So, the teacher conducts the group report through the individual anal-
ysis of the participants. Initially, get the “Cor atual” (current color) of each partici-
pant and reproduce the color in the mode “Criador de cor” (color creator) of the app.
As it is shown in Fig. 19.4, we can reproduce generated color in the app:
Thirteenth moment, reflection on the process through questions from the gen-
eration of photos and color recognition of all the participants of the groups, ques-
tions need to be launched. We remind the teacher that the questions presented here
are just suggestions, each teacher is free to change them and add others, in a way
that satisfies their reality. However, we call attention to the fact that mathematical
discussion is a way of understanding diversity and equity, from the Ubuntu perspec-
tive. Tutu (2004) notes:
Fig. 19.4 “Criador de cor”

(color creator)
I am human because I belong. I participate, I share”. A person with Ubuntu is open and
available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and
good, for he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated
or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than
who they are. (p. 31)
By allowing the students to understand that there is a hint of red and/or green
and/or blue in everyone’s skin color, it will be possible to realize that the chromatic
spectrum found in a rainbow represents much more than the pettiness of our imposed
binarity of black and white. Thus, it is important to question and discuss
mathematically:
(a) How much red does each photo have in its pigmentation? What is the percent-
age of red in relation to the total (100%) of the three colors?
(b) How much green does each photo have in its pigmentation? What is the per-
centage of green in relation to the total (100%) of the three colors?
(c) How much blue does each photo have in its pigmentation? What is the percent-
age of blue in relation to the total (100%) of the three colors?
(d) What do these percentages represent? What can we conclude individually?
(e) If we compare the participants of the group, what can we say about the percent-
age of red? What can we say about the percentage of green? What about the
percentage of blue?
(f) What can we say in terms common to all participants in the group?
404 M. Rosa
(g) Could any identified color exist without the three elements (RGB)? What does
this explain to us?
(h) Did any participant in the group have their RGB value identified as (0,0,0)?
Likewise, did any participant in the group have their RGB value identified as
(255,255,255)? What percentage of participants met these criteria? What do
you have to say about that percentage?
(i) Also, have you noticed that the colors displayed on the screen are not exact, and
they depend on the brightness and contrast settings and may vary from one
screen to another in relation to the camera and device? What does this reveal in
relation to any color study?
(j) Can we say that someone is currently white or black?
(k) Does having more or less red in skin color pigmentation change what a person
is? Likewise green or blue?
(l) Why are there people who suffer and are still killed today because of their skin
color? What do you think about this? What mathematical explanations would
you give about skin color that would help to understand what people may be
like in terms of skin color? What actions would you like to take regard-
ing racism?
This would be an activity in which the discussion of percentage, proportion,
and interval would be intertwined with the discussion of diversity and under-
standing/constitution of social responsibility in relation to racism. Then, we
move on to our considerations, which already carry out the analysis of the activ-
ity in the face of the Ubuntu philosophy and the perspective of social
responsibility.
19.6 Antiracist Mathematical Educational Movements:

Be-ing-Becoming Antiracist
“How to discuss racism in a mathematics class with digital technologies in a way

that mathematical concepts support the discussion?” was the research question
announced in this chapter. To seek to answer it, we drew a line of discussion about
the historicity of a “white mathematics,” which is taken as “neutral,” sometimes
under neutrality attributed to it as if it were an “entity” without any relation to
humanity. Also, on the other hand, the “white mathematics” is evidenced under a
single bias, that is, that of univocal production and undervalue judgment, with a
great symbolic power, on the part of an exclusively white group. In the meantime,
we discussed the structural racism that encompasses this way of thinking about
mathematics itself. These “mathematics” were mostly consolidated by white men
and by the intelligent people in the core of Enlightenment Europe, as if African
mathematical production did not ever exist and as if black people were not intelli-
gent, dehumanizing them, although it was already known back then that some math-
ematics contents had been hijacked from African ancient people (Powell, 2002).
In contrast to this structural racist movement, internal to the scientific field and
which extends to the field of common sense, through a habitus concerning the domi-
nant group, we are seeking to understand/constitute social responsibility in the face
of racism, discussing it in an educational space of mathematics with digital tech-
nologies. We seek not only to value mathematics but also to value the philosophy
that emerges from other places, Ubuntu, which manifests itself in a convergent way
with the issues raised by decoloniality and ethnomathematics. Thus, we also appre-
hend “white mathematics” because it has its value and because we want dialogue.
We understand the role of “we” as a key piece, as a tree trunk that sustains the fruit-
ful possibility of philosophy itself, and we advance with the potential for the articu-
lation of digital technologies for the debate of racism, for example.
In this way, we created an antiracist mathematical activity with DT as a way of
discussing racism in a math class with digital technologies. In other words, the
activity lists the exploration of percentages as a means of thinking about skin color
when in the 13th moment, which aims at the reflection, the questions “a,” “b,” “c,”
and “d” request the calculation of the percentage of red, green, and blue that each
individual has in the color identified in the tip of your nose, as a means of conclud-
ing that they all have red, green, and blue in their own color (questions “e” and “f”).
This conclusion permeates the digital transformation with the “Identificação de
Cor” app and marks race and racism with different issues in terms of reflective
intent. There is a movement of transformation of colorblind racism, because it is
desired to highlight the difference as a focus in this activity, but not with white racial
frames and implicit prejudice, that is, among other factors, the implicit aesthetics
that would promote white power. But as a source of understanding that everybody’s
skin color is composed of red, green, and blue, however, each complexion has its
individual nuances, and it has nothing of value over one another. Thus, there can be
no perfection or supremacy, for all of us matter equally.
However, the percentages of the same colors in the activity cause race and racism to be
questioned in the digital society, which allows one to understand the logics of obfuscation
and to be aware of the possible mechanisms of predatory inclusion. (McMillan Cottom, 2020)
In terms of the Ubuntu philosophy, the antiracist mathematical activity with DT

allows the understanding of the colors of the group, class, community, population,
and world as a way for each one to live, a possibility of existing together with other
people in a non-egoistic way, as we all have red, green and blue, and in an antiracist
and polycentric community existence (Noguera, 2012), because red or green or blue
are not just present on one person. They are on everyone’s skin: we are altogether
red and/or green and/or blue! This understanding is dealt with in the activity (ques-
tions “f” and “g”) and it goes further, since it highlights that racism is always struc-
tural, that is, it already brings the possibility of who will try to value possible
“whites,” that is, the white color that would have the maximum levels of red, green,
and blue or devalue the black color that would not have red, green, and blue pig-
ment, raising questions about this (questions “h” and “j”). Questions that predict
structural racism can emerge in the classroom itself, because it is an element that
integrates the economic and political organization of society and it provides the
406 M. Rosa
meaning, logic, and technology for the reproduction of forms of inequality and
violence that shape contemporary social life (Almeida, 2021, p.20–21). However, it
is up to the teacher to be able to raise other questions if the idea of valuing white, as
formed by maximum values of red, green, and blue (255, 255, 255) on the scale, and
the devaluation of black, as formed by minimum values of the scale (0,0,0), hap-
pens. Questions must be linked to the validity of arguments. That is, if you value a
white complexion, where can it currently be found? Who would be this truly white
person? Would red 255, green 255, and blue 255 finally be matched? Do these white
people really exist? (question “j”). Questions like these would serve to show each
one, once again, that even if one wants to attribute “power,” “value” to the white
color because it assumes the maximum values in the RGB scale, in fact the real
write and black doesn’t appear in human beings. Which photo presented or presents
these colors? In other words, the power relationship (attributed to one color and not
to another) does not come from mathematics. This, on the contrary, shows that
numerical differences do not express value or power, they simply express that the
colors are different assuming percentages of colors (red, green, and blue) similar to
all, once all have red, green, and blue in their pigmentation.
In addition, the participation of DT in this process is not limited to the use for the
use, but it also becomes an articulating act under an intention that conceives the
technological resource, that is, the app “color identification” as a participant in the
constitution of knowledge. This means that we acquire knowledge about the diver-
sity of colors with the app; only with it we determine how much red, green, and blue
there is in a color, to later calculate the respective percentages and proportionality
of each one in the final composition. We constitute knowledge with the digital tech-
nologies that are in the world and not about the world alone, so that these technolo-
gies help us to think about something else (Rosa, 2008, 2018). In this case, the
antiracist mathematical activity with DT even supplied questioning and varied use
of the technology itself (question “i”), that is, critical thinking about the digital
aspect also needs to be highlighted.
However, issues involving the idea of equity make up the very awareness of
social responsibility for those who suffer without having a real and just reason
(questions “k” and”l”). In this perspective, Rosa (2022) sustains that DT enhance
the understanding/constitution of the social responsibility of mathematics students
who are involved when they being-with-the-App presenting his understood about
the “Ubuntu” philosophy, without dichotomizing it. In this way, the author doesn’t
conceive the existence of a being independent of the other, but of a “being” that
thinks, acts and lives with others.
Finally, we understand that there is a way to discuss racism in a mathematics
class with digital technologies, for example, with the “Identificação de Cor” app or
another similar, so that mathematical concepts such as percentage and proportional-
ity of base colors that make up people’s colors support the discussion. That is, is
there a difference? Is there a reason for the other to be discriminated against? Why
are there people who suffer and are still killed these days because of their skin
color? What do you think about this? What mathematical explanations would you
give about skin color in order to help elucidate what people are like in terms of skin
color? What actions would you like to take regarding racism (question “l”)? With
this, we understand that it is high time to ask ourselves about it and take these ques-
tions to mathematics classes.
Acknowledgments The author thanks the National Council for Scientific and Technological
Development – CNPq for the financial support (Process: 311858/2021-0) and Daniel Zanchet da
Rosa for the translation and suggestions to our English version.
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Chapter 20
Philosophy, Rigor, and Axiomatics
in Mathematics: Imposed or Intimately
Related?
Min Bahadur Shrestha
20.1 Introduction
Ever since mathematics began being developed, mathematicians have seemed to be

relatively unconcerned with philosophy, as reflected in a Socratic dialogue (Rényi,
2006) in which ancient Greek philosopher Socrates mentions that the leading
mathematicians of Athens do not understand what their subject is about. Plato,
being devoted to philosophy in general and to the philosophy of mathematics in
particular, was motivated by Socrates.
Plato’s contribution of Platonic thought about mathematics, or Platonism, has
descended through the centuries as the basis of the philosophy of mathematics. The
Greek concept of the deductive–axiomatic model that culminated in Euclid’s
Elements was a paradigm of mathematical certainty until only recently. In Elements,
Euclid developed a magnificent axiomatic and logical system that served as the sole
model for establishing mathematical certainty until the end of the nineteenth century
(Ernest, 1991: 1). Perhaps the most evident modern feature of Elements is the
axiomatic method, which stands at the core of modern mathematics (Mueller, 1969).
Along with axiomatics, rigor has been a major requirement in formal mathematics.
Although the term rigor is usually associated with advanced mathematics, even in
that domain it seems to be largely accepted without much discussion. Moreover, it
seems to me that the concept of rigor is applied less prominently than the concept of
axiomatics.
Against that background, in this chapter I examine the terms rigor and
axiomatic(s) in detail. The extent to which rigor and axiomatization should be
achieved seems to depend mostly on how mathematics is viewed. By extension,
how mathematics is viewed is a relatively philosophical question. In that light, this
chapter seeks to examine the philosophical reflection on rigor and axiomatics in
M. B. Shrestha (*)
Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
410 M. B. Shrestha
mathematics. To that end, I first review the concepts of rigor and the axiomatic
method in mathematics. Although both concepts have largely been associated with
Western mathematical traditions as their integral components, Hindu mathematical
traditions, despite lacking formal axiomatic proof, have also contributed significantly
to the development of mathematics. Thus, rigor and reasoning in the Hindu
development of mathematics also warrant examination to understand the status of
the axiomatic method in mathematics and its relationship with philosophy.
To that purpose, the chapter is organized into four subsections—“Rigor in
Mathematical Argumentation,” “The Axiomatic Method,” “Rigor and Reasoning in
Traditional Hindu Mathematics,” and “Philosophical Reflection,” in that order—
followed by a summary and conclusion. When appropriate, pedagogical concerns
are also addressed to clarify the discussion from an educational point of view.
20.2 Rigor in Mathematical Argumentation
While searching for the precise meaning of rigor as used in mathematical argumen-
tation, I came across an article written by Philip Kitcher (1981) that addresses the
concept of rigor in a rather conventional way. Kitcher (1981, 1) states that “central
to the idea of rigorous reasoning is that it should contain no gaps, that it should
proceed by means of elementary steps.” He argues that the argument in reasoning is
rigorous when and only when the sequence of statements leads to the conclusion
and every statement is either a premise or a statement obtainable from previous
statements by means of elementary logical inference. In mathematical proofs, as a
kind of argument required to convince readers of the truth of mathematics, the rigor
in reasoning is aimed at establishing correct, consistent results. More recently, a
wider basis of proof has been taken into consideration that includes not only a cog-
nitive basis but also cultural and psychological bases (Joseph, 1994: 194).
Nevertheless, writers of standard textbooks on mathematics seem to be primarily
interested in the conventional mode, which has an exclusively cognitive basis.
To illustrate how formal deductive proof employs rigor in mathematical deriva-
tion, the following example demonstrates how to prove that 1 + 1 = 2. In doing so,
the example reveals how rigorous proof is based on assumptions of axioms and/or
postulates, along with definitions, as well as logical rules of inference (Ernest, 1991:
4–6). What is immediately noticeable is that proof is needed to establish a set of
rules in advance of stating definitions, axioms, and rules of logical inference. After
that, the proof can be developed in 10 steps (Ernest, 1991: 5). The example raises
the question of what rigor indicates and what advantages tediously providing such
proof for the fundamental facts of arithmetic affords. From a pedagogical perspec-
tive, my experiences of teaching pre-service students seeking master’s of education
degrees in mathematics have revealed the problem of convincing many students to
recognize the value of and commit to providing such seemingly ridiculous rigor. As
I see it, such rigor implies the development of consecutive steps without any lapses
of reasoning in the formation of the argument. Alternatively, the sequence of the
20 Philosophy, Rigor, and Axiomatics in Mathematics: Imposed or Intimately Related? 411
steps in the argument should be capable of connecting statements to form the integ-
rity of the proof. However, the concept of rigor, like many other concepts, is a rela-
tive one and may depend on many factors. Although Paul Ernest (1991: 5) has
developed 10 steps to show that 1 + 1 = 2, Reuben Hersh (1999: 254) has used only
three steps to prove that 2 + 2 = 4, and that discrepancy indicates that rigor in proof
also depends on the situation under consideration and other factors. Even so, the
traditional view on ideal mathematical knowledge can explain why such rigor is
needed; it maintains that by constructing rigorous proofs of known truths, mathema-
ticians at all levels can improve their knowledge of those truths either by coming to
know them a priori as certain or at least by making their knowledge more certain
than it was before (Kitcher, 1981).
Kitcher refers to that type of mathematical thinking as “deductivism,” which
consists of two claims. On the one hand, it holds that all mathematical knowledge
can be obtained by deduction from first principles and that such an approach is the
optimal route to gaining mathematical knowledge because it is less vulnerable to
empirical knowledge. Kitcher adds that though mathematicians can use deductive
and/or axiomatic proof in mathematics, such proof lacks an epistemological basis,
which deductivist theses attribute to first principles. A lack of an epistemological
basis means that neither first principles nor their bases can be discerned as being
true, and it is clear that so many such constraints are imposed in mathematics in
developing deductive proofs. Interestingly enough, mathematical proofs have been
useful in computer programming and formatting the power of mathematics in
packages (Skovsmose, 2010). Although deductivists’ way of producing mathematics
is generally not how mathematicians produce mathematics, the deductivist approach
is nevertheless a natural way to unravel the network of interconnections between
various facts and to exhibit the essential logical skeleton of the structure of
mathematics (Courant & Robbins, 1941/1996: 216).
The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry based on the logical consequences of
Euclid’s fifth postulate laid a strong foundation for the development of deductive–
axiomatic rigor in mathematics. Although the development of non-Euclidean
geometry has been an ingenious reconstruction in mathematics, one that has
broadened horizons in the field as well as in the philosophy of mathematics, it has
been limited to the field of geometry as the twin brother of Euclidean geometry. The
most important aspect of rigor in that context implies the strict logical consequences
of Euclid’s fifth postulate and its two alternative postulates as being the postulates
of non-Euclidean geometries. Moreover, whereas Euclid’s Elements defines basic
geometric objects, including points and lines, David Hilbert’s work does not. Hilbert
does not define line; on the contrary, he axiomatizes it by writing “Two distinct
points determine a line.” Hilbert’s efficiency, as a modern geometer, lies in
recognizing that a line, as such a simple geometric figure, cannot be defined
satisfactorily, but it can be axiomatized.
Rigor in mathematics seems to have become understood differently depending
on the course of the development of different areas of mathematics. In the past
200 years, the development of analysis, as a constructive method in mathematics
independent from deductivism, has been made rigorous by identifying and defining
412 M. B. Shrestha
many concepts and thereby allowing more refined development. By contrast, in the
name of generalization and formalization, constructively developed analysis has
been situated within deductive structures as a means to formalize it and lend it rigor.
Such a representation of mathematics has indeed become more robust and rigorous
with the work of Nicolas Bourbaki, the collective pseudonym of some young
formalist mathematicians in France most active in the mid-twentieth century;
however, it also seems to have become detached from the position from which it
was developed and from the purpose for which it was first used. For example, on the
topic of rigor in mathematics, E. T. Bell (1934) made the following remark in his
article:
No mathematical purist can dispute that the place of rigor in mathematics is in mathematics,
for this assertion is tautological, and therefore, according to Wittgenstein, it must be of the
same stuff that pure mathematical truths are made (p. 600).
The statement clearly reveals that, for mathematical purists, the rigor of mathe-
matics is inherent in mathematics and is made of the same core elements as mathe-
matical truths. By extension, Bell seems unsatisfied with the development of rigor
in mathematics textbooks for graduate students:
The present plight of mathematical learning––instruction and research––in
regard to the whole question of rigor is strangely reminiscent of Robert Browning’s
beautiful but somewhat dumb little heroine Pippa in the dramatic poem Pippa
Passes (p. 600).
Thus, though as beautiful as a heroine in the field of poetry, rigor is not as beauti-
ful in mathematics education. Similar to Bell, many scholars and mathematics edu-
cators, especially in the twentieth century, have shown concern with the difficulties
of teaching and learning mathematics due to the excessive emphasis on formalism,
which draws upon the axiomatic method as well as rigor. In response, Hans
Freudenthal, in his contributions to make mathematics more educational, particu-
larly in Mathematics as an Educational Task (1973), critically examined the use of
mathematics for educational purposes. Meanwhile, intuitionists Richard Courant
and Herbert Robbins, in their epoch-defining book What Is Mathematics?
(1941/1996), sought to emphasize the intuitive and constructive nature of
mathematics. Nevertheless, Jerome Bruner, a US learning theorist and well-known
scholar, expressed anxiety over the frustrating situation in mathematics education
bought about by an insistence on formalism. In his preface to Zoltan P. Dienes’s
book An Experimental Study of Mathematical Learning (1964), Bruner remarks:
I comment on the difference between Dr. Dienes and some of the others of us who have
tried our hand at revising mathematical teaching. Perhaps it can be summed up by saying
that Dr. Dienes is much more distrustful of “formalism” than some of the rest of us.
Such situation reveals that the more formal, rigorous development of mathemat-
ics has long been regarded as a hindrance to the development of mathematics educa-
tion. Many students seem to have difficulties understanding the essence of rigor in
mathematical arguments involved in proofs. It seems that rigor becomes especially
confusing in proofs of common truths—for example, showing that 1 + 1 = 2. Nearly
all students in my classes have been confused, if not perplexed, while trying to
develop an understanding of that proof, and, even after being aided with prompts
and hints, few have shown an understanding of its justification (Shrestha, 2019). In
fact, Kitcher (1981) has even suggested testing the hypothesis that demanding
rigorous proofs of known truths is just simply confusing.
It has recently been suggested that proofs in mathematics, to be convincing argu-
ments, need not only a cognitive basis but also cultural and psychological bases
(Joseph, 1994: 194). Social constructivism, as the philosophy of mathematics
(Ernest, 1991: 98), has particularly supported such novel interpretations of the
genesis of mathematical knowledge. Beyond that, Imre Lakatos’s Proof and
Refutation (1976), a common source for explaining the genesis of mathematical
knowledge, shows how mathematics has developed into well-arranged forms
marked by formalism and rigor. Through such lenses, answers to the questions
“What is rigor?” and “How much rigor is needed in mathematics?” are not already
fixed or given but the products of a dynamic discourse determined by the society in
which mathematicians seek to show the purpose of the validity of mathematical
knowledge. Because an axiomatic basis has played a starring role in the development
of formal, rigorous mathematics, my next consideration is the axiomatic foundation
of mathematics.
20.3 The Axiomatic Method
Robert and Glenn James’s Mathematics Dictionary (1988) defines axioms in the
context of mathematical systems as the basic propositions from which all other
propositions can be derived. Axioms are independent, primitive statements in the
sense that it is impossible to deduce one axiom from another. Euclid’s fifth postulate
is a well-known example of an axiom, one that took mathematicians and geometers
roughly two millennia to determine whether it was indeed a postulate or could be
proved as a theorem. Only in the nineteenth century did they conclude that the fifth
postulate was in fact a postulate independent of the other four and could not be
proven using the others. Added to that, they discovered that, unlike the fifth postulate,
the other postulates could be stated in ways leading to other systems of geometries
(e.g., hyperbolic and elliptical). Thus, the fifth postulate is an outstanding
demonstration of the independent role of axioms and postulates in mathematical
structure.
Because the conclusion of a proof of a theorem is a logical implication of the
truth of the axioms, such models of deriving truth are termed axiomatic models, and
both Euclid’s Elements and representative modern works such as Hilbert’s
Grundlagen der Geometrie showcase statements postulated as starting points and
everything else derived from them (Mueller, 1969). Ever since the development of
mathematical theory, much has been written on the axiomatic method (Wilder,
1967). Perhaps most prominently, Bourbaki’s version of 1953, as quoted by
Weintraub (1998) in his article, reflects that the axiomatic point of view in
mathematics appears as a storehouse of abstract forms of the mathematical structures
414 M. B. Shrestha
which happens without our knowledge that certain aspects of empirical reality fit
themselves into these forms as if through a kind of preadaptation.
The views of Bourbaki clearly maintain that the axiomatic basis of mathematical
structures represents certain aspects of empirical reality. Such an interpretation
essentially derives from a Platonic view of mathematics: that mathematical truths
are the propagation of preexisting reality. Here is the version of Hilbert, a master of
axiomatic mathematics in relation to the role of the axiomatic method in scientific
thought and mathematics:
I believe: anything at all that can be the object of scientific thought becomes dependent on
the axiomatic method, and thereby indirectly on mathematics, as soon as it is ripe for the
formation of a theory. By pushing ahead to ever deeper layers of axioms ... we also win
ever-deeper insights into the essence of scientific thought itself, and we become ever more
conscious of the unity of our knowledge. In the sign of the axiomatic method, mathematics
is summoned to a leading role in science (Weintraub, 1998: 1844).
Thus, according to Hilbert, the axiomatic method is not merely a means to estab-
lish scientific reasoning but also to gain profound insights into scientific thought in
the form of axiomatic thinking.
Axiomatic method has also been used in social science, especially, in economics,
in the assumption that the relationship between rigor and truth require an association
of rigor with axiomatic development of economic theories since axiomatization was
seen as the path to new scientific discovery (Weintraub, 1998:1845). The general
form of the axiomatic method as used in sociology applies to a set of propositions
summarizing current knowledge in a given field and for generating additional
knowledge deductively (Coster & Leik, 1964). In that light, the axiomatic method
can be viewed as a means to deduce deeper knowledge in Hilbert’s sense of the
word. Wilder (1967) stresses the role of the axiomatic method in introducing
increased abstraction. Wilder points out that Greek mathematics performed the role
of providing foundation as well as consistency. But, Ian Mueller (1969) argues that
the axiomatic method used in Euclid’s Elements differs from Hilbert’s modern
axiomatics even though both begin by postulating statements and deriving everything
else from those postulates. Whereas modern mathematics, including Hilbert
geometry, has the formal–hypothetical character of modern axiomatics, ancient
Greek mathematics was not a hypothetical science in the same sense. For the
Greeks, mathematical assertions were true and of interest only because they were
true, which explains why Euclidean axioms and common notions are taken as self-
evident truths. Wilder’s position on the nature of ancient Greek mathematical
assertions somewhat differs. He argues what Euclid and later mathematicians
described was not a physical reality but a mental model of what their perception of
physical reality had suggested. Thus, it did confront logical difficulties because the
mathematical model and the logic used were derived from reality (Wilder,
1967: 124).
Wilder divides the axiomatic method into three types according to the degree of
formalization. In the first, called the “Euclidean” type, the primitive terms are not
treated as undefined, and the model is described only in the sense of a mental model:
a model of the perception of the physical model. The second type of axiomatic
method, the “naïve axiomatic” type, is the one in which we are careful to list
primitive terms (such as, definition, axiom/postulate) needed to develop arguments,
but we list neither logical nor set- theoretic rules by which we shall abide (say, for
example, when introducing Group in modern algebra text, definitions and postulates
are stated, and then theorems are proved without listing logical rules).
The second type of method is taken as the principal tool for modern research in
all branches of mathematics, especially algebra, topology, and analysis. Wilder
(1967: 126) continues: “The third type of axiomatics in which the logical apparatus
not only enters the discussion, but is explicitly formalized, has provided one of the
major tools in the foundational research.” Summarizing his views on the types of
axiomatic methods, Wilder concludes that modern mathematics, despite its
abstraction, increasingly resembles applied science and thus interprets the three
types of methods as being at work in science in one form or another.
However, Abraham Seidenberg (1975), a historian of mathematics, takes another
view. He argues that though we have all been told since childhood that Euclid
developed the axiomatic method and that conclusion seems amiss when Elements is
viewed with modern hindsight (p. 263). Referring to Seidenberg’s (1975) article,
Yehuda Rav (2008: 138), in his own article, mentions that Euclid’s Book I is not an
axiomatic basis for the theorems but a theory of geometric construction for they
serve to control the straightedge and compass construction. Unlike Wilder, Rav
claims that it is fairly common for mathematicians to derive theorems from axioms
by using valid rules of logic. However, he adds, problems arise from taking the view
that ….. lacks actual evidence from the day-to-day proof of mathematicians, most
of whom are not logicians and could hardly name any rule or axiom of logic, much
less relate them to their proofing practices. Nevertheless, despite contrasting views
that whether or not mathematics was already organized on the basis of explicit
axioms, there is no question that deductive proof from some accepted principles was
required at least from Plato’s time (Rav, 2008: 136).
In the past two centuries, the increasing emphasis seems to have been placed on
the axiomatic and rigorous development of mathematics. Against that excessive
emphasis on rigor, axiomatics, and formalism in mathematics, new views have
emerged that take into account the historical and cultural development of
mathematics. In that line of thinking, the development of non-European mathematical
traditions, including Hindu mathematics, has been found to be important because
they, especially the Hindu tradition, address rigor in the absence of the axiomatic
method. To address that trend, the next section examines rigor and reasoning in that
tradition before the chapter commits to any philosophical reflections, namely, as a
means to examine the relationships between philosophy, rigor, and axiomatics in
non-European mathematical traditions.
416 M. B. Shrestha
20.4 Rigor and Reasoning in Traditional Hindu Mathematics
Recent literature has yielded more comprehensive interpretations of mathematics

and philosophy. Among the most important interpretations is that mathematics is an
intellectual cultural product whose various routes of development can be critically
examined from social and cultural perspectives. Such sociocultural interpretations
have shed new light on mathematics, particularly on the contributions of non-
European traditions to its overall development. As a result, mathematics in non-
European civilizations, including Hindu mathematics, also known as “Indian
mathematics,” has especially received sustained attention. In the history of
mathematics, the lack of axiomatic–deductive proofs has been a common charge
against Hindu mathematics, which has consequently been downgraded in the ranks
of mathematical traditions. Carl Boyer (1968: 238), in A History of Mathematics,
furnishes evidence of that trend:
Although in Hindu trigonometry there is evidence of Greek influence, the Indians seem to
have had no occasion to borrow Greek geometry, concerned as they were with simple
mensurational in some form as well as axiomatic– deductive method of proof rules.
To show the treatment of Hindu mathematics by numerous Western writers of the

history of mathematics, Joseph (1994) has pointed out that many commonly
available books on the field’s history either declare or imply that whatever the
achievements of Hindu mathematics, they have never had any notion of proof.
Indian historians of Hindu mathematics have remarked that the greatest charge
against Indian geometry in particular and mathematics in general is indeed the lack
of deductive–axiomatic proof that was so beloved to the ancient Greeks (Amma,
1999: 3). However, Amma adds that some commentaries and independent work
have preserved proofs and derivations of complicated mathematical series showing
that early Indian mathematicians were also not satisfied unless they could prove and
derive results. On that topic, Amma mentions an important difference between
Greek proof and its Hindu counterpart, that whereas the former is built upon a few
self-evident axioms, the latter aims at convincing students about the validity of the-
orems by way of visual demonstration. A more recent critical interpretation of
Indian mathematical traditions, one especially examining the Gaṇita-Yukti-Bhāṣā
(Ramasubramanium et al., 2008: 267), holds the following:
Many of the results and algorithms discovered by the Indian mathematics have been discov-
ered in some detail. But little attention has been paid to the methodology and foundations
of Indian mathematics. There is hardly any discussion of the processes by which Indian
mathematicians arrive and justify their results and procedures. And, almost no attention is
paid to the philosophical foundations of Indian mathematics, and the Indian understanding
of the nature of mathematical objects, and validation of mathematical results and procedures.
Regarding the history of mathematics on the Indian subcontinent, much attention

has also been given to extremely large numbers and significant developments in
algebra and trigonometry. Ernest (2009: 200) speculates that attention to large
numbers with decimal fractions, possibly made possible by virtue of an advanced
decimal place value system, might have aided in conceptualizing a large number of
series expansions in Kerala between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well
as contributed much of the basis for calculus, which is traditionally attributed to
mathematicians in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Nevertheless, the
lack of deductive–axiomatic proof in Hindu mathematical traditions has been
viewed as a great lapse. The disparity in interpretations raises the question of
whether the development of Indian mathematics indeed addressed valid, rigorous
mathematical proofs, as well as the question of whether mathematics can be rigorous
without an axiomatic foundation.
To begin to answer those questions, I first review the reasoning involved in upa-
patti, in the Hindu mathematical tradition. Although the tradition lacks formal proof
in the sense of Greek-based Western mathematics, it has upapattis as a means of
convincing argumentation to show students the validity of theorems through visual
demonstration as an acceptable form of proof in geometry (Amma, 1999: 3). Joseph
(1994: 197) mentions that roughly 2000 years ago, a great deal of attention in Indian
mathematics was paid to providing upapattis, some of which have recently been
noted by European scholars of Indian mathematics. In the following subsections, I
examine some of the notable features of the status of proof, rigor, and reasoning in
Indian mathematics in relation to upapattis.
Nature of upapattis A upapatti is a means of establishing the validity of mathe-
matical truths and removing doubts about such validity. Indian mathematicians
agree that results in mathematics cannot be accepted to be valid unless they are
supported by a upapatti or yukti, a Sanskrit term used to denote some scheme of
demonstration (Ramasubramanium et al., 2008: 288) that, even today, refers to
some method or technique to show how results hold true and/or how a problem can
be solved. In geometry, Upapatti seems to be a construction able to reveal how
results come to be true or a series of steps involved in algorithms with justification
(e.g., the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor, called
kuttaka in Hindu mathematics).
As mentioned by Amma (1999: 3), proof in Indian mathematics aims at convinc-
ing students of the validity of theorems with a visual demonstration of geometry,
mostly viewed as a construction to show how results hold true. In fact, most students
seem to rely on the scheme of construction to understand how results come to be
true and/or how facts hold true. Even mathematicians are said to do so to convince
themselves first, while systematic proof or demonstration is required only at a later
stage. That is, many basic properties (e.g., axioms, definitions, and rules of infer-
ence) are taken for granted while working and only explicitly formulated for publi-
cation. If those properties are omitted, however, then the core structure of
mathematical derivation contains the scheme to show how facts come to be true. In
a sense, it is hardly different from what medieval Hindu mathematicians and
astronomers did.
Upapattis in geometry are not a Euclidean type of proof or demonstration but can
be somewhat compared with constructions in Euclidean geometry (e.g., construction
of a triangle with a straight edge and compass) with justification. The problem,
albeit not in the form of a theorem, is given with a brief scheme of how to make the
418 M. B. Shrestha
construction. For example, “To draw a square equal to the difference of two squares”
(Amma, 1999: 45), it states:
Wishing to deduct a square from a square one should cut off a segment by the side of the
square to be removed. One of the lateral side of the segment is drawn diagonally across to
touch the other lateral side. The portion of the side beyond this point should be cut off.
(English translation based on the Apastamba Sulvasutra)
In demonstrations of geometry (e.g., to convert a rectangle into a square), the

construction of schemes involves terms such as “to cut off a part,” “juxtaposed,” and
“fill in” in ways similar to making paper cuttings and fillings. As such, it does not
show any abstract concept of demonstration such as that in Greek geometry. Because
geometry seems to have a relatively calculative nature concentrating on metric
notions of length and area and using algebraic notion, geometric algebra could be a
major contribution to early Indian mathematics, as mentioned by Seidenberg
(1975: 289):
Becker accepts, though hesitatingly, an early date for the Indian geometry (the 8th century
B.C.). Since the sulvasutra have the theorem of Pythagoras, Becker looks to old- Babylonia
for the source of Indian geometry. … The Sulvasutras convert a rectangle (say, a by b) in a
typical geometro–algebraic way; the old Babylonian would simply multiply a by b and take
the square root. The Indian priest constructs the side of the required square; the old
Babylonian computes it. So, the geometric algebra of the Indians could not very well have
come from the old Babylonians. And it could not have very well come from the Greeks, at
least not in 8th century B.C. And if the Greeks got its geometric algebra from the Indians,
then the history of Greek mathematics has to be rewritten.
That excerpt captures the nature of Hindu mathematics and its style of reasoning.
Upapattis, as the means of the demonstration and justification of mathematical
truth, use both geometrical and algebraic approaches in deriving, for example, the
Pythagorean theorem, as done by the great twelfth-century Hindu mathematician
Vaskaracharya (Joseph, 1994). The combined geometrical–arithmetical approach
can also be observed in the development of infinite series expansion, including the
series for the expansion of π (π = 4–4/3 + 4/5–4/7 + …) by mathematicians in
southern India in the fifteenth century (Amma, 1999: 166), regarded as one of the
more sophisticated developments of mathematical reasoning based on similar
triangles and the summation of series. It is also a prime example of the extension of
mathematics to infinite processes.
Nrsimha Daivajńa (1507) explains that the phala (“objective”) of a upapatti is
pánditya (“scholarship”) and the removal of doubt that can lead one to reject
misinterpretations made by others due to bhranti (“confusion”), among other causes
(as cited by Ramasubramanium et al., 2008). Such an interpretation of upapattis
seems to have two major functions: to develop advanced intellectual integrity and to
be free from any error or lack of clarity. In a sense, it relates to the process of ensur-
ing rigor, for it needs to be checked against errors in mathematical practice. The
purpose of that mathematical development is to make mathematics valid. On that
note, establishing the validity of mathematical knowledge by consensus among
mathematicians and astronomers seems to have long been unique in Hindu mathe-
matical traditions. Indeed, large gatherings of scholars, especially in the Jain
community, were often held to (dis)confirm the validity of whatever subject was
being discussed.
Increased attention to numbers and algorithms More attention to numbers,
algorithms, and calculation has been a common characteristic in the development of
Hindu mathematics, presumably made possible by the development of a place value
numeration system as a fundamental basis for the development of mathematics in
general. Ernest (2009) highlights the importance of Indian emphasis on numbers
and calculation for the possible development of infinite series expansions by Kerala
mathematicians between the fourteenth and sixth centuries. However, as mentioned,
Hindu mathematics has commonly been criticized for lacking proof for valid
mathematical results despite the field’s having developed numerous algorithms for
facilitating calculation. Indeed, Hindu mathematics places greater emphasis on
numbers and algorithms than methodology and foundations for reasoning. To
understand the nature of the Hindu mathematical tradition regarding proof, rigor,
and reasoning, it may be helpful to consider the underlying perspective.
Clarifying the nature and validation of mathematical knowledge, Gaṇita-Yukti-
Bhāṣā (Ramasubramanium et al., 2008) mentions that the classical Indian under-
standing of the nature and validation of such knowledge seems to be rooted in the
larger epistemological perspective developed by the Nyaya school of Indian logic.
The distinguishing features of Nyaya logic important to the present discussion
include the logic of cognitions (jnana), not propositions as in the Greek system, and
the lack of any concept of pure formal validity distinguished from material truth.
The text adds that Nyaya logic does not distinguish necessary from contingent
truths (i.e., analytic and synthetic truths) or accord the logic (tarka) of proof by
contradiction, as used in the development of Greek mathematics. Although the
method of proof by contradiction is used occasionally, no upapattis support the
existence of any mathematical object merely on the basis of logic alone
(Ramasubramanium et al., 2008: 289). Instead, such objects seem to be partly based
on the nature of mathematical knowledge, as considered in the next subsection.
The nature of mathematical knowledge Because the development of Hindu
mathematics did not subscribe to any concept of absolute certainty but to an elevated
intellectual level of mathematics free from confusion achieved by sharing in
assemblies of mathematicians, it seems that rigor in mathematical proofs or upapattis
developed in a way somewhat similar to Lakatos’s understanding of the genesis and
justification of mathematical knowledge. In modern terms, such knowledge may
thus be regarded as a quasi-empiricist type of knowledge. In any case, it differs
entirely from the Greeks’ notion of indubitable and infallible mathematical
knowledge. In the Hindu mathematical tradition, the term for mathematics (Ganita)
literally means “the science of calculation,” and the field ranks supreme among all
of the secular sciences (Datta and Singh, 1935: 7) in reference to Vedanga Jyotisa
(1200 B.C.E.): “As the crests on the heads of the peacocks, as the gems on the hoods
of snakes, so is the Ganita as the top of the sciences known as the Vedangas.”
420 M. B. Shrestha
Even though mathematical knowledge is given a supreme position among all

secular sciences in the Hindu tradition, it has no concept of absoluteness, which
may be one reason why the Hindu mathematical tradition did not subscribe to the
concept of absolute truth as in Greek tradition. In turn, the tradition had no need to
subscribe to the notion of perfect rigor in mathematical derivation based on self-
evident truths and the rules of logical inference as done by the Greeks. That
difference in the nature of mathematical knowledge seems to be a primary reason
for the difference in rigor and reasoning between Hindu and Greek mathematics.
20.5 Philosophical Reflection
The philosophy of mathematics generally does not treat specific mathematical ques-
tions but instead attempts to present thoughts, produced through reflection, on what
mathematics is and what mathematicians do and to contemplate the present state of
affairs in mathematics. It is not mathematics; on the contrary, it is about mathemat-
ics, as mentioned by Rényi (2006) in “A Socratic Dialogue on Mathematics.” It
might be one of the reasons why Hersh, in the preface of his book What Is
Mathematics Really? (1999), states that Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins in
their book, What Is Mathematics? Courant and Robbins (1941/1996), do not answer
the question raised by their book’s title, a book nevertheless praised by Albert
Einstein and Herman Weyl as a work approaching perfection and an astonishing
examination of the extent of what mathematics is. Although What Is Mathematics?
has been exceptionally useful for understanding many fundamental concepts of
mathematics, it does not explicitly deal with the question of what mathematics is,
because that question is basically one of philosophy. The task of the philosophy of
mathematics is to “reflect on” and “account for” the nature of mathematics (Ernest,
1991: 3), as Ernest (1998) examines in detail. In this section, my focus is to examine
philosophical reflections on axiomatic models and the concept of rigor that form the
basis of formal mathematics.
The twentieth-century development of the three schools of logicism, formalism,
and constructivism (incorporating intuitionism) was primarily guided by the pur-
pose of establishing a firm foundation for mathematics with absolute certainty. By
extension, Ernest (1998: 53) characterizes philosophers of mathematics as
philosophically inclined professional mathematicians, who, with their foundationalist
programs, focus on the philosophy of mathematical concerns and problems.
However, the philosophers of mathematics that developed those schools could not
establish a foundation of absolute truth in mathematics despite numerous attempts,
because Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem checkmated the foundationalists’
programs, especially the Hilbert program (Hersh, 1999: 138). If philosophers other
than mathematicians were involved in the development of the philosophy of
mathematics, then the case could have been different. Arguably, the interest and
intention of well-known mathematicians involved in the establishment of the
foundation of the philosophy of mathematics created a new perspective on the
relationship between mathematics and philosophy. The maverick philosopher Hersh

(1999: 151) quotes Hilbert’s motive for engaging in the philosophy of mathematics:
I wanted certainty in the kind of ways in which people want religious faith. I thought that
certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere.
… Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world would rest, I
found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from
falling.
That quotation reveals that the motive behind Hilbert’s formalistic philosophy
was to discover the means of achieving certainty in mathematics. However, that
motivation indicates an intention of imposition, not one of internal necessity.
In a sense, the axiomatic method seems to be intimately related to mathematics
as hereditary stresses as demanded for its own sake. In another sense, the method is
not genuinely inherent in mathematics. In studying the evolution of mathematical
concepts, Wilder (1967) distinguishes two types of influences: cultural influences,
which he referred to as “hereditary,” and environmental influences, meaning that the
development of most early mathematics, including arithmetic and geometry in their
primitive forms, was due to environmental aspects. By contrast, the axiomatic
development of mathematics, such as captured in Euclid’s Elements, was chiefly
due to hereditary stresses. In that case, the hereditary aspect indicates that the
arrangement of mathematical concepts in the form of structures (e.g., in Euclid’s
Elements) was mostly forced by an internal need to cope with paradoxes (e.g.,
Zeno’s paradoxes) and problems, including the problem of the incommensurability
of the sides and diagonals of rectangles and squares. Wilder (1967: 115) writes,
“Most historians seem to agree that crises, attendant upon the attempts to cope with
paradoxes such as those of Zeno, compelled the formulation of a basic set of
principles upon which to erect the geometrical edifice.” The axiomatic method is,
without a doubt, the single most important contribution of ancient Greece to
mathematics, which tends to deal with abstractions and which recognizes that proof
by deductive reasoning offers a foundation for mathematical reasoning
(Kleiner, 1991).
Both Wilder and Kleiner attribute the development of the axiomatic method to
the necessity of mathematics. Mueller, by contrast, critically counters Zoltan
Szabo’s position that the shift from empirical to pure mathematics was closely
connected with the idealistic, anti-empirical character of Eleatic and Platonic
philosophy. He insists that a Euclidean derivation is a thought experiment of a
certain kind, an experiment intended to show either that a certain operation can be
performed or that a certain kind of object has a certain property, and hence Euclidean
derivations are quite different from Hilbertian ones, which are usually said to
involve no use of spatial intuition. He mentions that the evolution of the axiomatic
method is explicable solely in terms of the desire for clarity and order in geometry
while the philosophical conceptions of mathematics, such as those of Plato and
Aristotle, were more probably the result of philosophically colored reflection on
mathematical practice than causes of that practice. Referring to Kline (2008),
Yehuda Rav (2008) mentions that it is generally accepted that the organization of
422 M. B. Shrestha
mathematical knowledge on a deductive basis has roots in the teaching of Plato. He

further refers to Kline (2008) to mention that Euclid who organizes the Elements in
the third century B.C.E lived in Alexandria and it is quite certain that he was trained
as a student in Plato’s academy.
Another historian of mathematics, Seidenberg, seems to be one of the harshest
critics of the axiomatic development of Euclidean geometry. In his 1975 article
“Did Euclid’s Elements, Book I, Develop Geometry Axiomatically?”, Seidenberg
states that we have all been told in childhood that Euclid developed the axiomatic
method, but that conclusion seems amiss after viewing Elements with modern
hindsight. According to Seidenberg, the first three postulates—“To draw a straight
line from any one point to any point,” “To produce a finite straight line continuously
in a straight line,” and “To describe a circle with any center and distance”—are bona
fide axioms in the sense that they serve to control the straight edge and compass;
however, they are not axioms for the development of geometry and indeed reveal
nothing about space. Referring to Seidenberg’s article, Yehuda Rav (2008: 137)
quotes the same paragraph and summarizes it by asking, “Could it be that, by
insisting on the axiomatic method, we are viewing The Elements from a false
perspective.” On the contrary, another historian of mathematics, T. L. Health,
admired the genius of Euclid and concluded that the fifth postulate was a postulate,
not a theorem to be proven, which took 20 centuries of attempts to finally realize (as
cited by Seidenberg, 1975: 271).
The above examples are representative of not only contrasting views on the
development of the axiomatic method in the pioneering work of Euclid’s Elements
but also of the necessity of the axiomatic method as the working basis of mathemat-
ics. Yehuda Rav (2008:30) argues as to where the axioms do come and where the
axioms do not come in, and, where it seems to be indispensable and where subsid-
iary. He says unlike the indispensable place of axioms in foundational studies and
mathematical logic in general, when looked at other branches of mathematics, it is
striking what subsidiary role, if any, is played by axioms other than in geometry or
in the introduction of structural axioms that define the subject matter of the theory
(such as in group theory). In analyzing the situation, he writes, from its starts
analysis stands out as an example of non-axiomatic edifice, but Dedekind’s essay on
continuity and irrational numbers was intended as an axiomatic basis of analysis. He
claims that analysis has never been axiomatized as a deductive theory as it devel-
oped. The rigorization and axiomatization of calculus were made mostly in 19th and
20th century with arithmetization and giving precise definitions of the key concepts
(such as, function, limit, continuity, derivative, and integral) and developing rigor-
ous proofs.
What seems to me is that the axioms and definitions are also needed in mathe-
matical development for they characterize/specify the abstract mathematical entities
(for the mathematical system) which is a kind of creation/construction in mathemat-
ics. Otherwise, how could one characterize mathematical notion like groups, real
numbers, and complex numbers? It is important to note that intuitively appealing set
of counting numbers were needed to be axiomatized as Peano’s postulates only in
the nineteenth century to lay foundation for arithmetic. Such situations might also
indicate that the axiomatic basis of mathematics became necessary at some point in
its development sooner or later depending on the nature and development of the
subject considered. Peano’s postulates characterized the notion of counting num-
bers, provided the basis for systematically going forward to any counting numbers,
and gave a basis for mathematical induction. The other thing to be noted is that the
perceptive philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, might have perceived the necessity
of deductive reasoning to go forward from some basic assumptions which have been
found most dependable in mathematics. Not only the modern foundationist philoso-
phers (like Frege, Russell, Hilbert, and Godel) but also logicians and mathemati-
cians have also felt the necessity of an axiomatic model in mathematics. Although
it is said that working mathematicians rarely work on the basis of an axiomatic
model in most areas of mathematical construction, most mathematicians seem to
have strong faith in it. In many cases, a working mathematician may create mathe-
matics constructively, and then in order to justify and communicate it to the circle
of mathematicians, he/she may need to seek a convincing basis which in turn draws
on an axiomatic basis as the valid reference. This is why both the mathematician
and the philosopher may have some common concerns on the rigor and axiomatic
basis of mathematics.
Traditionally, rigor in reasoning is based on axiomatics, as demonstrated in
Kitcher’s (1981) definition, because central to the idea of rigorous reasoning is that
it should contain no gaps and that it should proceed by means of elementary steps.
In the development of the mentioned three schools, especially formalism and
logicism, the rigorous development of mathematical thinking has been the primary
function of the philosophy of mathematics and has been intimately related to the
fulfillment of the philosophical purpose of achieving the absolute certainty of
mathematical knowledge. But, rigor is not only dependent on axiomatics; however,
as illustrated by Kitcher (1981), Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (the
founders of calculus) felt problems in his interpretation of a derivative. Kitcher
shows how Newton faced problems in interpreting the derivative in a rigorous way.
In that case, rigor might have been considered differently in geometry and calculus.
The arithmetical interpretation of the notion of integration independent from
geometrical intuition might be regarded as rigorous in analysis insofar as it further
clarifies and generalizes the concept in the domain of real numbers. The development
of calculus in the nineteenth century made many concepts clear by formulating
concepts through definitions, and intuitive concepts explicitly formulated that
helped to conceptualize them precisely resulted in the further conceptualization of
the subject. Such cases might represent rigor in non-axiomatic settings. If we
consider rigor in light of its precise meaning as in calculus and analysis, then it
might seem to be more internal to mathematics and independent from philosophy.
Much of the literature indicates that the development of the Greek axiomatic
method was closely connected with the dialectical method in Greek philosophy.
Referring to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Mueller quotes the Greek philosopher’s
view insisting that the assumptions of science be not merely true but also primary,
immediate, and more known causes of the conclusion drawn from them. Such views
indicate the influence of philosophy on the axiomatic method and on the development
424 M. B. Shrestha
of rigor in modern mathematics. Such is especially the case of the Eurocentric

mathematical tradition being the custodian to ancient Greek thinking. Since the
Eurocentric mathematics curriculum has been globalized in the name of valid math-
ematics, thus in practice, it has been the only mathematics that we think about and
perform. That circumstance explains the necessity of examining the nature of the
mathematical development of non-European culture, which is found to differ in
nature from Western mathematics. In that context, the development of Hindu math-
ematics seems to be an important one for shedding light on the nature of mathemati-
cal knowledge.
Hindu mathematics, despite being rich and contributing significantly to the
development of mathematics in general, lacks formal axiomatic proof in
mathematics, as mentioned. As such, various questions arise: If so, does not the
development of Hindu mathematics contain valid and rigorous proof? And what
then is the philosophical basis behind them? The Hindu mathematical proof of the
upapatti, a means of convincing argumentation for students to grasp the validity of
theorems via visual demonstration as an acceptable form of proof in geometry
(Amma, 1999: 3), is compatible with recent views on thinking and teaching
mathematics, in which proofs are recognized as convincing arguments in constructive
ways. With upapattis as a means of establishing the validity of mathematical truths
and removing doubt, Indian mathematicians agree that results in mathematics
cannot be accepted to be valid unless they are supported by upapattis as mentioned
in Ganitayuktibhasa (Ramasubramanium et al., 2008: 288). On that
topic, Ramasubramanium et al., refers to Nrsimha Daivajńa’s (1507) assertion that
the phala (“objective”) of a upapatti is pánditya (“scholarship”) and the removal of
doubt that can lead one to reject misinterpretations made by others due to bhranti
(“confusion”), among other causes. Thus, rigor is achieved through an elevation of
intellect accompanied by the removal of any confusion or error, while validity is
achieved by consensus among mathematicians.
Such a view on mathematical thinking seems to be somewhat similar to the
quasi-empiricist view on mathematics stating that mathematics is a dialogue
between people tackling mathematical problems (Lakatos, 1976). The quasi-
empirical nature of Indian mathematics, at least to some extent, makes it analogous
to the natural sciences. In the chapter “The Genre of Indian Mathematics,” Khim
Plofker (2009) mentions, via an Indian source, that Indian mathematics mostly
served as the handmaid of astronomy, while credit for divorcing mathematics from
astronomy is particularly due to Bakhshali manuscript and mathematicians
Mahāvīra, from the ninth century, and Sridhara, from the ninth and tenth centuries.
As a result, Hindu mathematics developed in the service of religion. The religio-
astronomical orientation of Hindu mathematics differed from that of the develop-
ment of Western mathematics, which seems to have been motivated by a combination
of mathematics and theology beginning with Pythagoras and, from there, character-
ized religious philosophy in ancient Greece, in Europe in the Middle Ages, and the
West in modern times through Immanuel Kant (Russell, 1957). According to Russell
(1957:37), there has been an intimate blending of religion and reasoning, of moral
aspiration and logical admiration for what is timeless, all of which comes from
Pythagoras and distinguishes the intellectualized theology of Europe from the more
straightforward mysticism of Asia. Russell characterizes the nature of Western
intellectual thinking as that which gave rise to the timeless truth of mathematics.
That view on the development of Western mathematics indicates both a philosophi-
cal and mathematical basis for the development of the axiomatic method and rigor
based on it, as well as differs from the relatively naive basis of the Hindu mathemat-
ical tradition.
20.6 Summary and Conclusion
Rigor in reasoning and the axiomatic basis of proof seem to be central to a mathe-
matical proof in general. Whereas rigor is primarily guided by an intention to
achieve the flawless derivation of mathematical truths, the axiomatic model of proof
seems to have resulted from ancient Greeks’ intellectual and cultural tradition
motivated particularly by the philosophical thinking of Plato and Aristotle. The
dynamic between them can be examined along at least two lines of thinking. On the
one hand is the thinking of Mueller (1969), which insists that the evolution of the
axiomatic method is explicable solely in terms of the desire for clarity and order in
geometry and that the philosophical conceptions of mathematics, including those of
Plato and Aristotle, were more probably the result of philosophically colored
reflection on mathematical practice than on the causes of that practice. On the other
hand is Wilder’s (1967) thinking that the development of the Greek axiomatic
method was closely connected with the development of the dialectical method in
Greek philosophy, which is also Szabo’s (1969) view. Wilder (1967: 115) writes
“Most historians seem to agree that crises, attendant upon the attempts to cope with
paradoxes such as those of Zeno, compelled the formulation of a basic set of
principles upon which to erect the geometrical edifice.” He pointed out that the role
of the axiomatic method in Greek mathematics seems to have been a twofold
objective, the provision of foundation which at the same time met the current charge
of inconsistency, where the later one may have been the motivating factor (p.117).
However, formal axiomatic thinking in mathematics from the twentieth century was
guided by the purpose of establishing consistent mathematical truths, which, in
effect, demanded rigor based on axiomatic and formal logic. In turn, the twentieth-
century foundationalists such as Hilbert and Russell (with Whitehead) put forth
great effort in different ways to lay a firm foundation for the absolute certainty of
mathematical knowledge and protect it from contradictions and antinomies that
arose at the turn of the century (Ernest, 1991: 8). But the humanist/maverick
philosopher Reuben Hersh mentions that such attempts have been checkmated by
Godel incompleteness theorems. Maverick and social constructivist thinkers have
explained the mathematical rigorous development as a cultural function.
Social constructivists view the precise development of formal reasoning in math-
ematics as indicating a higher level of cultural growth. To explain its cause, Sal
Restive (1994: 216) writes that the greater the level of cultural growth, the greater
426 M. B. Shrestha
the distance between the material ground and its symbolic representation, and the
more that the boundaries separating mathematics worlds from each other and from
social worlds thicken and become increasingly impenetrable. Such an interpretation
explains why pure mathematics seems to be isolated from the social world. A similar
reason might apply to its relationship with philosophy, because the philosophy of
mathematics is also an outcome of cultural growth that addresses mathematics from
a different perspective. Because philosophy is not mathematics but about
mathematics as seen from a distant position (Rényi, 2006), philosophy takes a
distant view of mathematics, one that seems to be remote but is in fact powerful and
provides the grounds for the existence and justification of mathematical truths by
characterizing the nature of mathematical knowledge. Nevertheless, in the case of
twentieth-century foundationalist philosophers such as Frege, Hilbert, and Russell,
philosophy plays a different role. Indeed, well-known mathematicians such as
Hilbert sought ground on which to establish mathematics as being absolutely true.
To that purpose, he purposively imposed his theory of meta-mathematics to make
that foundation rigorous. Being a mathematician–philosopher, he also attempted to
rescue philosophy by providing that firm foundation and gave rigorous treatment to
Euclidean geometry, a prime example of a modern axiomatic model. Thus, his
meta-mathematics can be viewed as an imposition for the purpose of creating
absolute rigor in proof. In that and other ways, philosophy has been related to rigor
and the axiomatic method.
By contrast, the remarkable development of Hindu mathematics (Almeida &
Joseph, 2009), one without axiomatic rigor or any well-formed philosophical
presumptions, tells a different story of the development of mathematics. Even
though Hindu mathematics lacks proofs based on axiomatics, it developed reasoning
for the clarification and validation of mathematical truths in upapattis, a form of
convincing argumentation. Hindu mathematics was also developed in the service of
religion and bears a religio-astronomical orientation (Amma, 1999: 4). Even so, the
religio-astronomical orientation of Hindu mathematics differs from the orientation
of the development of Western mathematics, which seems to have been motivated
by a combination of mathematics and theology beginning with Pythagoras.
According to Russell (1957: 37), the intimate combination of religion and reason-
ing, of moral aspiration and logical admiration for what is timeless, comes from
Pythagoras and distinguishes the intellectualized theology of Europe from the more
straightforward mysticism of Asia. Thus, the development of timeless truth in math-
ematics has been based on axiomatics and logical rigor, largely motivated by the
desire for absolute truth in mathematics. The axiomatic method is taken to be the
single greatest contribution of ancient Greek thinking and thus remains dominant in
mathematics. By the same token, not having been motivated by such thinking, even
with the active contact of India and Greeks in centuries past, is viewed as being one
of the great lapses of Indian scholarship (Amma, 1999: 4).
Due to the lack of any deductive or axiomatic structure in mathematical results,
Hindu mathematics may have missed opportunities to face logical problems such as
mathematics in Greece faced during its development. After all, the method of proof
by contradiction is used rarely and only to show the nonexistence of certain entities.
From a sociocultural perspective, that development should not be viewed as a lapse,

but as a different route toward mathematics that did not require using the Greek
style of deductive–axiomatic thinking. Because Hindu methods were pedagogically
oriented to convince students of the validity of mathematics, many well-known
scholars composed commentaries in addition to their original contributions, which
also became of pedagogical use. The oral transmission of knowledge in gurukul
education also preserved those methods. Although those methods may seem to
represent naive mathematical thinking, one not bothered with the problem of
absolute certainty and geared toward the solution of problems without any presumed
conception of ideal mathematics, they might also direct us toward thinking in
alternative ways. At the very least, they convey that an emphasis on rigor and
axiomatics is not the basic universal character of mathematical thinking or teaching.
In light of the above discussion, it seems that the axiomatic method and the con-
cept of rigor based on it are not inherently contingent in mathematics but instead
motivated by a particular intellectual–cultural development. Even so, rigor as the
flawless, clear, precise, and organized elevation of intellectual thinking in
mathematics seems to be more innate to mathematics in the sense that both proof
and upapatti share the common purpose of justification and the elevation of intellect
(budhi-vridhi). Despite differences in the nature of their development, they seem to
share the common basis of mathematical objectivity, as also seen in the development
of Egyptian geometry, which was guided by the purpose to measure land, and the
development of Hindu geometry, guided by the religious purpose of making altars
and fireplaces. Such objectivity in mathematics might be a common motivation
among mathematicians, and the logical axiomatic method used in mathematics is
the rule for organizing and preserving the certainty that mathematicians value.
Indeed, most mathematicians seem to believe in some kind of certainty in their
mathematical discoveries: that certain sudden “A-ha!” or “Eureka!” moment during
their mathematical thinking (Byers, 2007: 329). However, maverick philosophers
Hersh and Steiner (2011: 54) interpret that feeling of certainty as an aesthetic
pleasure—a satisfaction with deep, clear thinking—and as simply the emotional
roller coaster of discovery. Nevertheless, belief in the certainty of mathematical
knowledge seems to be common among users of mathematics, including teachers
and students, most likely, I think, due to the usefulness and dependability of
mathematics (Shrestha, 2019). Certainty also seems to be the common motivation
of most mathematicians and philosophers, though they differ in their vocations.
Ancient Hindu thinkers ranked Ganita as being supreme knowledge above all other
knowledge but did not subscribe to the notion of absoluteness. The axiomatic
method, as a special attribute of the ancient Greeks’ intellectual development and its
pursuit of absolute truth, seems to have a unique philosophical orientation in
addition to a mathematical basis. However, exceeding emphasis on axiomatics and
rigor based on it, including that endorsed by Hilbert and Russell (with Whitehead),
seems to be exceedingly intentional and can be viewed as an intended imposition
(motivated by the desire to meet the crisis in the foundation caused by the set-
theoretic foundation), even if all mathematical constructions in a sense are
intentional to some extent.
428 M. B. Shrestha
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Chapter 21
Idealism and Materialism in Mathematics
Teaching: An Analysis
from the Socio-epistemological Theory
Karla Sepúlveda Obreque and Javier Lezama Andalon
21.1 Introduction
Teaching of mathematics is a part of social sciences. However, mathematical knowl-

edge itself does not have a clear connotation or at least a single acceptance by the
entire population. Philosophy of mathematics has tried to find ontological and epis-
temological answers to the problem of mathematics and its nature. The discernment
of its origin and nature have generated different philosophical positions throughout
history. Sometimes these positions have not only been different but also contrary to
each other. For Zalamea (2021), the efforts of the philosophy of mathematics have
focused on answering issues related to its being and nature, but it is still pending to
deal with historical and phenomenological issues related to this knowledge.
These ways of thinking and understanding knowledge, reality, and mathematical
knowledge, in particular, are present and expressed in the classroom during the
activity of teaching mathematics. Its manifestations are not always perceptible and
can become unconscious in teachers and students. Sometimes they are deliberate
choices made by teachers according to their ways of thinking or understanding
reality.
Two philosophical currents that understand mathematical knowledge in a differ-
ent and contrary way are idealism and materialism. Both are present in the teaching
of mathematics in the classroom. The aim of this chapter is to reflect on their expres-
sions in the classroom and their implications. The reflection we present is based on
an approach of the socio-epistemological theory.
K. Sepúlveda Obreque (*)

CIED, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Temuco, Chile
e-mail: ksepulveda@uct.cl
J. Lezama Andalon
Instituto Politécnico Nacional de México – CICATA, México DF, México
430 K. Sepúlveda Obreque and J. Lezama Andalon
Idealism as a philosophical current is commonly related to the philosophy of

Plato, who proposes that the authentic reality is in the world of ideas, and not in the
reality sensible to our senses. This idea corresponds to a priori conceptions of
knowledge. For Plato, ideas are the true reality, because unlike the sensible and
changing world captured by our senses, ideas are eternal and immutable. From this
perspective, the senses give us knowledge of the particular, but the universal is only
attainable through reason. For its part, German idealism, with representatives such
as Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel, rejects the notion of noumenon, nothing exists
beyond known reality. For Echegoyen (1997) German idealism enhances the active
role of the cognizing subject and affirms that all aspects of known reality are a
consequence of its activity. For his part, Zalamea (2021) explains that epistemological
idealism does not need to rely on real correlates, because its truth values are ideas.
In opposition to idealism, materialism as a philosophical current grants reality a
material character, which is governed by the laws of motion of matter. For Reyes
(2020), in materialism, consciousness has a secondary character. For philosophical
materialism, matter is not created by the materialization of an “absolute idea” or of
a “universal spirit,” it exists eternally and develops by the laws that govern
movement. Philosophical thought, matter, nature, and being are an objective reality
that exists outside our consciousness and is independent of it. Thus, thought is a
product of matter and is elaborated by our brain. In other words, knowledge is a
posteriori.
Social epistemology as a theory of educational mathematics deals with the study
of didactic phenomena linked to mathematical knowledge, assuming the legitimacy
of all forms of knowledge, whether popular, technical, or cultured, since it considers
that they, as a whole, constitute human wisdom (Cantoral et al., 2014). The socio-
epistemological research program differs from classical programs because it is
concerned with explaining the social construction of mathematical knowledge and
institutional diffusion. Considering that mathematical knowledge is the result of a
process of social construction in situated contexts gives social epistemology a
character of a materialistic theory.
Socio-epistemological theory is concerned with the study of man doing mathe-
matics in specific contexts. With this, it makes up for the lack of attention that the
philosophy of mathematics has paid to the historical contexts and situations that
give rise to mathematical knowledge.
Socio-epistemological studies are characterized by problematizing knowledge,
historicizing it, and dialectizing it. This theory takes elements from mathematics
and social sciences. From mathematics, it considers its cultural dimension, and
from the social sciences, it considers the acceptance of the construction of shared
meanings. A preliminary statement of the socio-epistemological research program
is that mathematics is a human creation situated in particular socio-historical
contexts.
For some, reality and knowledge have been understood as matters in general. For
example, for idealism concepts such as immutability and universality are
endorsements of absolute general truths. Sometimes it has been thought that these
general matters are governed by general laws, such as the invariable laws of nature.
21 Idealism and Materialism in Mathematics Teaching: An Analysis… 431
Newton and Linnaeus thought that nature and organic beings were general and
immutable matters, but today we know that this is not the case. Nature and all
organisms not only mutate, but their changes are the product of their own stories.
That is, the current state of all things and reality are a particular historical result.
In Smith (1982) and Ricardo (2001), reality and knowledge are understood as the
product of the individual action of man on his environment to obtain subsistence
conditions. This way of thinking was called Robinsonades by the nineteenth-century
materialists.
Marx (2007) explain that in the Robinsonades of the eighteenth century, pre-
sented a subject isolated from society who manages to subsist alone in nature,
becoming the starting point of history. This idea that conceives the possibility of an
individual without a social bond is qualified by materialists as something unrealiz-
able. To refute the idea of an individual devoid of a social bond, Marx (2007) com-
pares it to the possibility of the emergence of language without individuals.
According to materialist positions, the existence of a human being without social
fabric isn’t possible. The current social density makes impossible the existence of
the individual outside of society. The social reality and the set of historical elements
of a particular moment are those who imprint the determining characteristics on the
production processes and the products involved in these processes. The products as
products and at the same time inputs for new productions are influenced by their
historical context of production. The same happens with the production of
mathematical knowledge, as a social, historical, and territorially situated production.
In this way, knowledge understood as a human product arises from a production
process where the man who produces it is also transformed, going from a producer
of knowledge to a product of his own production process. In sum, man is no longer
the starting point of history, but a product of history. In short, man and knowledge
exist and are the product of their social-historical reality in particular. This way of
understanding knowledge happens for the production of mathematical knowledge
and situates it as a historical product.
The socio-epistemological theory does not consider mathematical knowledge “in
general,” because from the historical understanding of the production processes,
mathematical knowledge is understood as a “particular situated” product. Socio-
epistemology conceives man as a gregarious being, part of a historically determined
social group, which is why it conceives of knowledge as a particular historical
product. Socio- epistemological studies understand and address mathematical
knowledge in four dimensions: epistemological, didactic, social, and cognitive.
A principle of socio-epistemology that accounts for this way of thinking is the
principle of epistemic relativity. This principle validates various ways of knowing
and meaning in mathematics. Other socio-epistemological principles that show the
materialistic nature of the theory are contextualized rationality, progressive
resignification, and the normative principle of social practice. Regarding the value
of mathematical knowledge, for Cantoral (2013) it consists in the use that people
can make of it. Production and use value form an indivisible unit in the very
production of mathematical knowledge.
The socio-epistemological theory seeks to explain the social construction of

mathematical knowledge, considering it as an epistemological alternative that
incorporates the social component. Understanding the social not only as the idea of
interaction between people of a social group, but from socio-epistemology it is
described as the set of regulations that regulate the behavior of groups. In the
interview with OEI, Cantoral (2019) explains that these groups can be the inhabitants
of a geographic region or the students of a course in a primary school. This chapter
will analyze the presence of idealistic and materialistic positions in the teaching of
school mathematics from a socio- epistemological perspective.
21.2 Mathematical Knowledge: A Vision from Idealism

and Materialism
Idealism and materialism as philosophical currents, like the rest of philosophy, seek
the ultimate meaning of the consciousness of the world and of all forms of existence.
In the case of mathematical knowledge, these currents of thought problematize the
duality “universality or particularity.” Zalamea (2021) explains that there is a tension
between the uniqueness or multiplicity of the objects and methods of mathematics,
as well as of mathematical thought in general. He adds that resolving this binary
situation is not simple, since it requires a complex analysis of reality in an
integrated manner.
Reflecting on the dualities in mathematical knowledge, on the existence of the
plural or the singular, the objective or the subjective of this knowledge, the universal
or the particular of mathematics, is not something new. For centuries philosophers
have been dealing with these questions and have disagreed among themselves. For
example, Engels (1960) mentions that for Dühring philosophy is about the
development of the highest form of consciousness of the world and of life and
includes in a broad sense the principles of all knowledge and all will. If ideas are
accepted as they are, it is necessary to be able to answer what those principles are
and what their origin is. Those could come from the mind and thought or from the
physical world. Solving issues like this occupy philosophy and at the same time
divide it.
The different ways of understanding reality are related to the way in which we
understand the origin and nature of knowledge. For his part, Zalamea (2021) states
that it is not convenient to unilaterally choose one current of thought or another.
According to him, in mathematics there is a mixture between realism and idealism
that does not allow us to have ontologies or a priori epistemologies without first
observing all mathematical knowledge in detail. Regarding whether mathematics
comes from the world of a priori ideas or from the physical world, Celluci (2013)
states that there is evidence from cognitive science that as a result of biological
evolution we have “core knowledge systems” that are phylogenetically ancient,
innate, and universal. These systems capture the primary information of the positive
integer system and the Euclidean plane geometry system. He calls these “natural
systems.” He adds that there is also an artificial mathematics, which is constructed
by humans and is not the result of their biological evolution. It is rather the result of
the need to develop models, maps, or symbol systems. From the socio-epistemological
theory, the concept of “social practice” refers to the activity of the human being in
the environment in which it develops. Cantoral (2013) explains that social practices
generate mathematical knowledge. Some social practices that are identified in
different human groups are count, measure, compare, approximate, predict, equate,
infer, visualize, and anticipate.
Mathematical knowledge, however, it’s conceived, is a philosophical matter par
excellence. When studying mathematical knowledge in philosophical study, we find
that the main difference between the different principles of philosophy lies in the
origin attributed to them. For idealists, the construction of the world and reality
come from thought, mental constructions, and invariant categories that precede man
and his history. For materialists this is not so, for them knowledge and mathematical
knowledge in particular, does not come from thought detached from the external
world. They come from human action on the external world, so the principles that
govern it are not the starting point of knowledge, but the historical result of man’s
productive work. In this way, mathematical knowledge is not a way of thinking that
is applied to nature and history but is a product that is obtained from them.
In a critique of idealism from a materialist, Marx’s position uses the concept of
ideology or false consciousness of reality to refer to what he describes as an inverted
understanding of reality. He criticizes those who try to explain from the development
of ideas, issues of nature, or the human person. This understanding of things would
be inverted because it is based on unjustified basic ideas or assumptions on which
its validity depends. In the formal constructions of mathematical knowledge, there
are also basic discursive determinations called axioms which are established as a
starting point.
The axioms correspond to truths that are accepted without proving them, and
they are not provable from mathematics itself. These postulates are the product of
our language and are established as truths that obey our intention to validate them.
The axioms provide the discursive base with which mathematicians can advance in
the establishment of theorems and discover the logical consequences of the
conventions initiated from the terms of a theory. Arboleda (2002) discusses the
difficulty of using the axiomatic- deductive method in mathematics research and
teaching. He explains that it is possible to use the axiomatic method to base
mathematics on a reduced number of simple principles, but emphasizes the
importance of verifying in teaching and researching the agreement between the
logical definition of an object and its experimental representation; by this he refers
to the function called “deaxiomatization” proposed by Frechet. For his part, Celluci
(2013) analyzes the inconsistency of the axiomatic method which he describes as
the deduction of a group of basic axioms, which must be assumed to be consistent
in order to justify a statement. In this way, Celluci validates the analytical method,
because for this method the hypotheses used in the solution of a mathematical
problem do not have to belong to the same field of the problem, which broadens its
resolution possibilities by integrating mathematics to other areas of reality.
In these types of issues lie the differences between idealists and materialists
about mathematical knowledge. For some, this arises from logical inferences based
on elementary a priori assumptions, and for others, mathematical knowledge is the
result of a historical process of material intervention in nature that establishes
transitory truths a posteriori.
In the philosophy of mathematics, platonic ideas dominate where mathematical
objects exist governed by their own relationships with each other, those that occur
independently of us and the physical world. For Platonism, mathematical meanings
are explained in relation to their truth conditions that are justified or denied in
mathematics itself. The opposite of this is to justify the meaning of a mathematical
object considering the conditions that allow obtaining proofs of truth. Idealism as a
philosophical current from its beginnings with Plato to the German idealism of the
eighteenth century shares the idea that the knowledge of phenomena should tend to
the ideal, should be, considering that the state of perfection of things is found in
Metaphysical space. Idealism as a philosophical current from its beginnings with
Plato to the German idealism of the eighteenth century shares the idea that the
knowledge of phenomena should tend to the ideal, to the “must be,” considering that
the state of perfection of things is found in metaphysical space. Engels (1961) in his
Dialectics of Nature criticizes metaphysical mathematicians and mentions them as
a mixture of remnants of old philosophies that boast of unshakable results using
imaginary magnitudes. For example, holding that a=a as a principle of identity is
only true in ideal terms, because no organism or object is equal to itself in nature,
except at the same instant. An indisputable truth of material reality is that everything
is constantly changing. Therefore, a correct mathematical philosophy should deal
with the dialectical relationship of identity and difference in order to explain the
state of things.
The general laws that are possible to establish from the verification of ideal
objects are not really general in all time or all space. Its validity is limited to the
space of ideas. For example, the concept of infinity corresponds to an ideal object.
The set of Natural numbers (N) contains infinite elements. In reality there is no
infinity, the universe is not infinite, for some it is expanding, and for others it is
oscillating; therefore, there can be no straight lines or parallel lines or any infinite
length in nature.
If these different ways of understanding mathematical knowledge are considered
as opposing philosophical positions, it is worth asking which of them is correct.
Answering that question requires a deep and complex analysis that cannot be taken
lightly. To elucidate which current is true, it is necessary to establish what is meant
by truth and to carefully review the historical development of each of them and the
multiple elements that affect them, at least.
In relation to whether mathematical knowledge corresponds to ideal notions or
to historically situated constructions from material reality, in Aboites and Aboites
(2008), we find some questions that may help us to answer this dilemma:
If Bohr’s theory of the atom talks about nuclei and electrons, are those nuclei and electrons
real and do they exist as the theory predicts? Or, is Bohr’s theory of the atom just a useful
tool for calculating the optical spectra of light atoms like hydrogen and helium, regardless
of whether what the theory says about electrons spinning around nuclei exists in reality or
not? Does the number Pi exist independently of whether there are human minds to conceive
it, what is the relationship between logic and mathematics, are they the same thing, is
mathematical knowledge just a game of chance, and are they the same thing? Are they the
same? Is mathematical knowledge just a game based on symbols and rules? Do Gödel’s
incompleteness theorems affect what we can or cannot say about the world? Is the logic of
our thinking unique? Is mathematics essential to science, or can science be done without
mathematics? Is mathematics part of a web of knowledge or is it independent of the world?
(Aboites & Aboites, 2008, p.11)
In this chapter it is not intended to establish the character of truth of each one of
them; however, from socio-epistemology we are interested in investigating if they
are present in the teaching of school mathematics.
21.3 Philosophical Expressions of the School Curriculum
The school curriculum is a construct of a philosophical nature. This expression of

the school itself contains ontological, epistemological, teleological, and axiological
implications. With all this, the school determines the type of human being that it
intends to produce from its anthropogenic function. With the curriculum, the school
validates a type of knowledge as official, establishes the goals of the social subject,
and attempts to institute official social values. In this way, students are trained from
the school duty expressed through ethical assumptions of the curriculum that
determine the socially standardized moral subject.
Our interest is to analyze epistemologically the expression of idealism and mate-
rialism in the teaching of mathematical knowledge. In consideration of the socio-
epistemological character of our analysis, it is necessary to consider the didactic,
social, and cognitive dimensions. For this, we will analyze some elements of the
Chilean school curriculum.
The subject that deals with teaching mathematical knowledge in the Chilean
school is called mathematics. The singular of the name is an epistemic evidence that
shows that in the Chilean school only one mathematics is accepted as official and is
taught. The first learning objectives of this subject indicate that children must count,
read, compare, and order numbers in a field less than 100. The implicit character
given to the idea of number accounts for abstract, independent, or metaphysical
objects. In the consideration of the number as a mathematical object, a monocultural
position is appreciated that does not include other forms of counting other than the
use of the natural numbers N.
The natural numbers N included in the curriculum are a set that is established
logically from the Peano Axioms. This axiomatic does not deal with defining the
number, the same thing happens in the curriculum in the first courses. Students read,
order, and compare numbers without knowing the definition of numbers. They
incorporate the concept of number with pictorial and concrete supports, sensing its
possible meaning, without receiving a formal definition. The complexity of this lies
in the difficulty of knowing and understanding abstract ideas if you do not have a
clear definition of them.
The axiomatic of the natural numbers N contains the notion of infinity in the third
axiom. By defining that every natural number has a successor that is also a natural
number, it is established that it is a set with infinite elements. The notion of infinity
is an abstraction that does not exist in nature, just as numbers do not exist. Its
understanding requires the creation of mental structures associated with abstract
ideas about ideal objects not possible to verify in the physical world. The students
of the first school levels do not have the necessary evolutionary development to
understand this type of ideas. Trying to make them understand them demands a
great didactic effort from teachers who must use concrete representations to ensure
that children have an understanding of the natural numbers N. In this sense, knowing
and understanding mathematical objects proposed from idealism present great
difficulties of understanding for school children of the initial courses.
The idea of infinity present in school mathematics is unaware of the natural
world and physical laws as we know them. The laws that govern the phenomena of
nature are mainly geocentric, and the development of science has made it possible
to establish general laws that cover places outside the earth, but not the entire
universe, so the idea of eternal or infinite laws is not possible. The infinite from
mathematics is an abstraction, a creation of thought that exists in the world of ideas.
This abstraction can be understood as an eternal repetition, an enormous magnitude,
or the permanent development of something and brings with it the idea of movement.
Perhaps the only way to explain the notion of infinity in relation to material reality
is with the eternal state of movement and change. Didactic work with children will
be more successful if they manage to relate what they need to learn with their
context and their material reality.
The idea of numbers has been typical of various cultures and human groups
throughout history. There are Roman, Egyptian, Mayan, and Mapuche numbers, to
name a few. Each culture has created them with the intention of counting or
quantifying, their differences lie in formal matters such as their writing, their base
system, or their relationship with axiological or religious matters of the human
groups that created them. For example, zero has been the object of study for having
different meanings in the different numbering systems. For Aczel (2016) zero is
“the greatest intellectual achievement of the human mind” (p. 201).
In Villamil and Riscanevo (2020), we find that in Egypt zero was used as a refer-
ence value in construction plans to refer to the base level. They add that in Chinese
civilization zero was interpreted as the absence of elements. In Mesoamerica, the
Mayans also used the zero and represented it with a snail shell. For Duque (2013)
this symbol was associated with the cycle of the mollusk that was coming to an end.
The Mayans also symbolized zero with a corn seed that represented the beginning
and end of the cycle of a seed before changing levels and becoming a flower, which
was understood as a spiritual level. Zero as we know it in the current decimal system
is related to nothing. Villamil and Riscanevo (2020) quote Betti (2017) saying that
the symbol for zero was created by Ptolemy who used the first letter omicron with
which the word ουδεν begins, which refers to nothing. These diverse meanings
about zero account for socially and historically situated constructions, related to the
material environments and cultural meanings of different human groups. In these
constructions we observe the presence of axiological elements that are the result of
a material way of life.
For students at the school stage, understanding the idea of the absence of ele-
ments in a set and its symbolism or the absence of value in some position of a num-
ber in the decimal system, are complex abstract ideas. These ideas may attempt to
be represented concretely, but they do not exist in the physical world as they are
described as mathematical objects. If, in addition, the mathematical notions
presented to students are axiologically neutral, a new difficulty is added, because
the material world in which they live and the things that surround them are related
to values, which are a historical result of life in society.
The school curriculum contains a large number of idealistic elements and a pri-
ori conceptions of mathematical objects. Understanding mathematical construc-
tions as abstract and independent objects is a mono-epistemic expression that does
not consider their social value and can cause cognitive difficulties in students. In the
review of the school mathematics curriculum, we find that there is no evidence of a
materialist position in it. On the contrary, the learning objectives of the different
school levels contain various mathematical objects, all of which do not exist in the
material or social reality of the student body. Despite the didactic guidelines that
suggest contextualizing the teaching, the learning objectives propose the under-
standing of the mathematical objects themselves. To facilitate knowing and under-
standing the mathematical concepts of the school curriculum, a didactic work is
required that relates them to the social and material reality of the students so that
they make sense to them. The socio-epistemological theory as an epistemic alterna-
tive incorporates the social component, dealing with the mathematical knowledge
put into play and promoting the significance of mathematical objects based on the
use made of them. This materialist epistemological current recognizes different
rationalities, validates different ways of knowing, and gives meaning to the teaching
of mathematics, accepting the progressive redefinition of knowledge.
21.4 A Look at Classroom Work
The importance of analyzing the presence of philosophical expressions in the work

of teachers lies in the anthropogenic implications of school education. Teachers
with their speech legitimize another way of understanding knowledge and reality,
and that influences students. Cantoral et al. (2015) point out that the school
mathematical discourse shared by teachers validates the introduction of mathematical
knowledge in the educational system and legitimizes a new system of reason.
In Sepúlveda’s doctoral research (2021), classes of a group of teachers from
southern Chile were observed. Then they reflected with them on mathematical
knowledge. From this experience we can say that teachers, in general, are not aware
of the epistemology they have about mathematical knowledge. Nor aware of the
philosophical content of the statements he or she makes to students about
mathematical knowledge.
In order to try to understand whether there is a presence of one or another philo-
sophical current in the teaching of mathematics, we observed how teachers develop
the school curriculum with students. We placed ourselves in the first school years
and in the teaching of numbers and basic operations. For example, we looked at the
way teachers taught counting. They ask children to read the numbers printed on
sheets stuck on the walls of the classroom. In this activity the children start counting
from zero. This work carried out by the students is related to the memory process.
The absence of concrete material to count prevents children from intuiting that it is
not possible to use zero to count something. The ability to count is the individual
assignment of labels in sequence to the elements of a set, where the last label repre-
sents the cardinal (Caballero, 2006, p. 27). According to this, it cannot be counted
when there are no elements to label. Counting using zero would be counting nothing
and that is not possible in the physical world. The implications of zero and the con-
cept of nothing, in students who are still in the evolutionary stage of concrete opera-
tions, are theoretically impossible.
In this, a lack of reflection by teachers between mathematical objects and their
relationship with the physical world is observed. For example, Dummett (1986)
mentions that when we know that there are 5 men and 7 women in a room, we say
that there are 12 people. To know the total number of people in the room, counting
was not used, addition was used. Something similar is found in Quidel and Sepúlveda
(2016) who comment that when a Mapuche person was asked how he counted the
sheep he had, he indicated that because of their color. If there were the amounts
corresponding to each color, then there were 30 of his sheep. In this case, what the
Mapuche person does to count is to add. This gives us evidence of the relative value
of knowledge and allows us to understand that formal knowledge and knowledge
put to use are not the same.
In the teaching of addition and subtraction, zero is also a number that can be dif-
ficult to understand. When working with concrete elements, you cannot add zero
objects, however, in addition as a mathematical object, there is adding zero
(a + 0 = a). Zero is the neutral element of addition. In the case of subtraction,
mathematically zero can be subtracted, however, in a material context if I do not
take anything away, I am not subtracting. In this a difference is observed between
the understanding of numbers as ideal objects a priori and numbers as objects in use
a posteriori. In this type of situation, philosophical assumptions present in teaching
and the constant idealism-materialism tension are revealed.
In relation to how teachers teach basic operations, something similar happens in
relation to the epistemic tensions mentioned above. To teach addition, teachers tell
children that adding is increase and subtracting is taking away. This is true when
dealing with a collection of concrete elements. Teachers explain multiplication as
repeated addition and division as condensed subtraction. Indeed, this is fulfilled in
the set of Natural numbers (N). But, for multiplication or division cases such as
0.6 × 0.3̅ ó 0.87, the above does not hold. The teaching of addition or basic operations
as a priori ideal mathematical objects have certain properties that are not possible to
find or demonstrate in a material reality. For example, in school rationality,
mathematical objects, adding is equal to subtracting, a + − b = a − b, in other
words, in the addition/subtraction relationship, it is always an addition. Similarly,
a 1
the division of a or the power x 2 = 2 x 4 . Mathematically, every number
b b
can be represented as the power of another: 𝑦 = 𝑎𝑥, or it also happens that a power
with a negative exponent is equal to the inverse of the number raised to a positive
1
exponent, a n n . In this way you can continue establishing relationships of
a
opposites between numbers.
The logical relationships between mathematical objects occur at the level of
ideas, they are not always reproducible or possible to represent in relation to the
physical world or the material conditions of existence. However, mathematics does
deal with the abstraction of numerical characteristics from physical properties.
Engels (1961) points out that the concept of variable magnitude introduced by
Descartes causes a turning point that introduces movement and dialectics to
mathematics.
Another issue observed in math classes is that teachers present the number as
something eminently quantitative. Indeed, the number is a quantitative entity, but
numbers are distinguished by their qualitative characteristics. In this way 4 is equal
to 4, but at the same time, it can be 4 times 1, it can also be 2 times 2, and the square
root of 16. That is, a 4 can be the cardinality of a set, the result of an addition, the
power of a number, or the root of another number. In addition, 1 is the basic number
of any numbering system, and for 1 it is true that 12 , 1,1−1 is always equal to 1. The
same thing happens with any power raised to 0, a0 = 1. With this, the numerical
value that can be something objective becomes subjective, and its ontology begins
to depend on the context, even if this context is ideal.
In order to perform operations with fractions, 11-year-old students know the
prime numbers. These numbers correspond to a nominal qualitative category. They
differ by their characteristics from the rest of the numbers, just like even numbers or
multiples of 3 do, to cite an example. To refer to the use of the qualitative in
mathematics, Engels (1961) mentions how the terms infinitely small or infinitely
large are used, introducing qualitative differences even as qualitative antitheses of
an insurmountable type. That is, the terms refer to immeasurably different quantities,
where the number is not enough to determine the difference and mathematics must
use qualitative arguments to establish the truth of the magnitude.
Understanding mathematical knowledge and school mathematics in particular
can be a work of deep reflection. In the doctoral research of Sepúlveda (2021), it is
mentioned that in order to know the epistemology that teachers have about
mathematical knowledge, they were asked how they understand mathematical
knowledge, its origin and its nature.
All the teachers stated that they had never thought about these issues; however,
they tried to respond from their intuition. Here are some of the teachers’ statements:
P1 I think that mathematics is one, independent of the context in which it works,

because its properties and representations are universal.
P2 It is an exact science; its nature is the scientific logic that explains the universe.
P3 Their origin is independent, they exist by themselves, they should only be discov-
ered and understood by humans.
P4 It is in everything that surrounds us, man has discovered it when there is a need.
P5 They exist in everything, and man has been discovering them.
P6 Its origin must be discovered and deciphered by man.
P7 There is one mathematics, and it is universal.
P8 There is a mathematics that is universal, its language is unique.
P9 As a science there is one, which studies different topics, but has a universal
language.
Teachers in general do not reflect on the mathematical knowledge they teach, this
is due to a lack of time to do so, to management teams that do not favor reflection in
schools, or to professional training processes focused on doing and not on reflecting
on what it does. When these teachers respond spontaneously, they declare
mathematical knowledge as one, that is, they do not recognize other mathematics
outside of official mathematics. This shows a mono-epistemic position of knowledge.
They also declare that mathematics is a universal knowledge, thereby ignoring the
situated character of mathematics as a contextualized human production. They add
that they exist by themselves and must be discovered. This is an acceptance of
apriorism as a philosophical option. The result of observing a group of teachers
during their teaching work showed an important presence of idealistic assumptions
in their work and statements. Being unaware of their epistemic ideas, it could be
thought that they are a product of the teaching tradition and the general acceptance
of mathematical knowledge as ideal objects independent of the physical world.
Despite the historical tension between idealism and materialism, the observed
discourses tend to privilege a vision of mathematics as a body of universal and
immutable objects. To advance in the recognition of human activity in the
construction of mathematical knowledge and in the acceptance of its social value, it
is necessary to move towards relative epistemological positions. Not doing so and
continuing to depreciate the mathematical forms of many is also a form of symbolic
violence towards the other that must end (Sepúlveda & Lezama, 2021, p. 18).
21.5 Final Considerations
Idealism and materialism are two philosophical currents that understand reality in
the opposite way. In the teaching of school mathematics, a classical position of
understanding knowledge in ideal terms prevails. The absence of a reflection of this
fact by the teachers, both in their initial training and in the institutional and personal
processes of professionalization, makes an idealistic presentation of mathematics
persist in the school mathematical discourse, a fact that makes it difficult to construct
meanings. of both mathematical objects and their operational processes. There are
efforts by teachers to give context to mathematical objects in order to make them
meaningful for students; however, the didactic work needs to continue advancing in
considering the mathematical knowledge put into use in real material contexts.
Mathematics has played a leading role in the historical processes of humanity
and despite the fact that part of it corresponds to ideal or abstract assumptions, it
clearly responds to the needs of the development of natural sciences and the
technological advance necessary for human subsistence. We consider that the
understanding of mathematics as an ideal knowledge may respond to a hereditary
factor of culture that has been passed down through generations and that it is
necessary to review so that mathematical knowledge reaches a wide level of
democratization and thus achieves in society its status of popular and technical use
as well as wise.
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Chapter 22
Cognitive and Neurological Evidence
of Nonhuman Animal Mathematics
and Implications for Mathematics
Education
Thomas E. Ricks
22.1 Introduction
The belief that “only humans do mathematics” permeates the field of mathematics
education (Ricks, 2021; Scheiner & Pinto, 2019). This human-centric perspective is
manifest throughout the literature by such phrases as mathematics is a human
activity (Freudenthal, 1973, 2002), a human construct (Abbott, 2013), a human con-
struction (Longo, 2003), a human discipline (Fey, 1994), a human endeavor
(Dehaene, 2011), a human enterprise (Noddings, 1985), a human invention
(Bridgman, 1927), a human potential (Simon, 2007), and a human social activity
(Tymoczko, 1980). Many authors directly state their own personal beliefs about the
issue; for example, Dörfler (2007) asserted it is a “trivial fact mathematics is a
human activity. Under all circumstances mathematics is done and produced by
human beings” (p 105). Other authors imply similar beliefs by summarizing the
human-centric positions of others, especially Freudenthal (Boaler, 2008; Cobb
et al., 2008; Freudenthal, 1973) Thinking of mathematics as human activity has
improved mathematical pedagogy because emphasizing the humanness of the
mathematical process refocuses the pedagogy of the subject on the way students
make sense of mathematics (Steffe, 1990). But is the mathematics education maxim
that mathematics is a uniquely human creation and activity scientifically accurate?
If not, how might animal mathematics matter for mathematics education?
Much recent scientific research suggests that many nonhuman animals (hence-
forth, just animals) mathematize as part of their natural behavior (Nieder, 2021). I
organize this chapter—a meta-analysis of literature on the subject—around two
types of recent scientific evidence for animal mathematics emerging from the field
of animal and/or comparative research: cognitive and neurological studies
T. E. Ricks (*)
School of Education, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
e-mail: tomricks@lsu.edu
444 T. E. Ricks
evidencing legitimate animal mathematizing. Cognitive animal research investi-

gates the psychological underpinnings of animal cognition by developing hypothe-
ses about the way animal minds think, by observing animal behavior, and making
inferences about the unobservable animal thought processes necessary to produce
such behavior. Neurological animal research investigates the biophysical
underpinnings of animal cognition to describe the way animal brains function, by
developing schematics of neurological structure based on observable brain
signatures. Together, these two lines of scientific evidence reinforce each other and
demonstrate at least some forms of animal mathematics exist. I conclude the chapter
by considering some implications animal mathematics research may have for the
field of mathematics education.
22.2 Cognitive Research on Animal Mathematics
Recent cognitive research on a wide range of animals provides substantial evidence

of animal mathematical capacity. These non-neurological animal cognition studies
investigate animal mathematics through careful scientific experiments that observe
mathematical behavior as animals complete research tasks. These studies are peer-
reviewed, appear in reputable scholarly publications on animal and/or comparative
cognition, and control for conflating experimental variables to avoid the possibility
of anthropomorphizing animal behavior. I describe two principal areas of observable
mathematical behavior mentioned consistently in animal cognitive research:
numerical discrimination and basic mathematical competence.
22.2.1 Numerical Discrimination
Many animals demonstrate the cognitive capacity to numerically discriminate dur-

ing experimental trials that control for potentially confounding non-numerical vari-
ables like size, density, or luminance. The great apes (Hanus & Call, 2007; Tomonaga
& Matsuzawa, 2002) and other nonhuman primates (hereafter, just primates) like
monkeys (Gazes et al., 2018) all demonstrate the capacity to numerically discrimi-
nate, as well as other mammals (Chacha et al., 2020), birds (Tornick et al., 2015),
fish (Seguin & Gerlai, 2017), cuttlefish (Yang & Chiao, 2016), frogs (Stancher
et al., 2015), salamanders (Uller et al., 2003), lizards (Miletto Petrazzini et al.,
2018), and insects (Howard, 2018). Two distinct cognitive systems are believed to
play a role in animal numerical discrimination: subitizing and the approximate mag-
nitude system.
Subitizing Many animals demonstrate subitizing (also subitising, exact number
system (ENS), object file system (OFS), or object tracking system (OTS) (Nieder,
2020a))—the rapid, highly accurate, cognitive capacity to numerate small groups of
22 Cognitive and Neurological Evidence of Nonhuman Animal Mathematics… 445
objects—a special form of numerical discrimination also present in humans from

birth (Brannon & Terrace, 1998). The typical (including human) subitizing range is
four or less elements (Dehaene, 2011), but some species naturally subitize past the
normal subitizing range, including pigeons (up to five), budgerigars and jackdaws
(up to six), and ravens, Amazon and African grey parrots, magpies, and squirrels (up
to seven) (Al Aïn et al., 2009; Davis & Pérusse, 1988; Hassenstein, 1974; Hassmann,
1952; Howard, 2018; Nieder, 2005). This uncanny natural ability for numerosity
was first investigated (in humans) by Jevons (1871) and later coined subitizing
(Latin for sudden) by Kaufman et al. (1949). Dehaene (2011) popularized the term
for mathematics educators with his The Number Sense book (de Freitas & Sinclair,
2016) that detailed subitizing capacities in human infants and a few common animal
species, like rats and pigeons. Howard et al. (2018) calls subitizing a “counting
mechanism with low quantities” (p 11). Subitizing appears to be widespread in the
animal kingdom; De Cruz (2006) claims that every animal species tested so far for
this capacity has demonstrated it.
Subitizing is legitimate mathematics because it allows animals to discriminate
specific numerosities that convey “the cardinality of [a] set” of perceived items
(Nieder & Dehaene, 2009, p 186). Subitizing offers a concrete description of animal
numerical capacity and is supported by a hundred years of intensive scientific
research (Clements et al., 2019; Jevons, 1871). And lest we dismiss subitizing as
non-mathematical, attempts by humans to mimic this simple counting capacity in
computer vision have required sophisticated human mathematical algorithms—
including convoluted neural networks (Zhang et al., 2015)—and is an active area of
ongoing mathematical research (Pezzelle, 2018).
Approximate Magnitude System The ability of animals to discriminate numeros-
ity is not limited to the subitizing range. Much research confirms (Dehaene, 1992;
Gallistel & Gelman, 1992; Nieder, 2020a) that many animals possess an approxi-
mate magnitude system (AMS), a capacity to represent any quantity (with no upper
limit!) as a rough estimation—also referred to as the analog magnitude system,
analog format, or the approximate number system (ANS) (Cantlon, 2012). Whatever
its name, the nature of this capacity differs from the exact number system (ENS) of
subitizing; the AMS always entails fuzzy estimation (akin to probability distribu-
tions) instead of recognizing discrete quantity. Like subitizing, the AMS is another
example of an underlying, phylogenetically-embedded, biologically-determined,
numerical capacity shared by both animals and humans (Nieder, 2013).
If metaphorically represented on a number line, the AMS perceives an observed
(objective) countable quantity as a logarithmically symmetric continuous possibility
(subjective) centering on the objective quantity and tapering off to overlap and
conflate with nearby surrounding numerical possibilities. The larger the objective
quantity observed, the greater the potential spread of the probable possibility, and
the more likely the observer is to confuse the objective quantity with similar
quantities, something called the numerical size effect (Nieder, 2020a). If an animal
compares two quantities, the accuracy of differentiating their difference (or
446 T. E. Ricks
recognizing their similarity) decreases as the quantities converge numerically. For

example, Stancher et al. (2015) describe how frogs struggle to differentiate between
areas of food having four versus three items but regularly choose six food-item
areas over three food-item areas. This capacity to increasingly differentiate between
numerosities as the difference between the numerosities increases is known as the
numerical distance effect (Nieder, 2020a). Numerous studies document this
similarity of animals and humans to represent discrete, potentially countable
quantities as nebulous, indistinct judgments of numerosity (Cantlon, 2012; Dehaene,
1992; Gallistel & Gelman, 1992).
Surprisingly, the capacity to discriminate numerosity is also documented in some
rather tinier-than-amphibians-and-reptiles creatures. For example, much research
on the lowly honeybee demonstrates their ability to discriminate numerosities
within the normal subitizing range as they navigate and track the number of land-
marks while foraging (Chittka & Geiger, 1995; see also Bortot et al., 2019; Howard
et al., 2018; Howard et al., 2020). Howard et al. (2018) documents that with train-
ing, honeybees outperformed capacities previously reported in the literature, includ-
ing “differentiating a correct choice consistent with rule learning compared to an
incorrect choice consistent with associative mechanisms” (pp 212–213),
“discriminat[ing] challenging ratios of number[s]” (p 213), “learn[ing] numerical
rules” (p 213), applying numerical rules “to value zero numerosity” (p 213),
“perform[ing] simple arithmetic” (p 213), and “associat[ing] a symbol [with] a
specific quantity” (p 213).
Although research publications documenting animal numerosity capacity are
obviously more prolific for species that are easier to study in laboratory settings,
like rats, mice, small fish, domesticated chicks, and honeybees (Howard, 2018),
these studies help demonstrate that numerical discrimination is widespread in the
animal kingdom, and at least some forms of mathematical cognition do not require
large, human-like brains.
22.2.2 Basic Mathematical Competence
Once cognitively aware of numerosities through subitizing or the AMS, many ani-
mals then utilize those numerosities to demonstrate basic mathematical competence
(Nieder, 2013). In this way, animals continue to mathematize in the original
Freudenthal (2002) usage that mathematics is applying common sense to quantita-
tively act upon perceived realities. For example, Nieder (2013) reports:
Beyond [AMS’s] discrete quantities, nonhuman primates can also grasp continuous-spatial
quantities, such as length [and] relations between quantities resulting in proportions…
[M]onkeys perform primitive arithmetic operations such as processing numerosities
according to quantitative rules… it is well accepted that numerical competence is… found
in animals. (p 2–3)
Additionally, studies on two hundred wild, semi-free rhesus monkeys document

the ability of these primates to discriminate normal subitizing-range (four or less)
numerosities without training as evidenced by their reliable ability—after watching

researchers slowly deposit food items one by one within two containers—to choose
the container with the greater number of food items (Hauser et al., 2000).
Chimpanzees, however, can discriminate up to 10 items when choosing the larger of
two food containers that have also been filled one by one (Beran, 2001; Beran &
Beran, 2004). The numerical and problem-solving capacity of the chimpanzee has
been known for many decades (Boysen, 1988, 1992; Boysen & Berntson, 1989;
Boysen et al., 1993; Dooley & Gill, 1977; Ferster, 1964; Matsuzawa, 1985; Muncer,
1983; Rumbaugh et al., 1987; Woodruff & Premack, 1981).
Clearly, humans do much mathematics that animals cannot do, primarily because
humans have a refined ability for symbolization (Nieder, 2020b). But animals not
doing all of human mathematics should not prevent the realization of the mathematics
that they can do. Describing what mathematical capacities different animals
manifest and how they relate to developing human mathematical capacities is in its
infancy. Keeping track of which animals do what mathematics presents challenges,
especially as no descriptive theory of mathematical sophistication is universally
accepted. Many different ways of organizing animal mathematical capacity and
linking it to what humans can do—at which age-level or developmental level—have
been proposed. Howard (2018, p 12–13, 195, 197, modified and adapted for prose)
elegantly summarized animal cognition research on numerical mathematical
competence by creating an intermeshed matrix of eight numerical concepts: zero
numerosity, quantical cognition, subitizing, approximate (or analogue) magnitude
system, arithmetic, numerical cognition, numerical competence, and true counting)
with 23 unique numerical tasks (the italicized text that follows will be explained
later in the chapter): (1) sensory representation of zero; (2) categorical understanding
of “nothing”; (3) quantitative understanding of zero numerosity; (4) symbolic and
mathematical use of zero; (5) use of nonnumerical cues correlated with number; (6)
quantity discrimination of numerosities below five elements; (7) subitizing; (8)
quantity discrimination which obeys Weber’s Law; (9) discriminate numbers above
four; (10) [serially] counting above four; (11) spontaneous arithmetic-like reasoning;
(12) symbolic representation of numbers in arithmetic; (13) symbol and number
matching; (14) exact number use; (15) arithmetic problems; (16) nominal number
use; (17) ordinality [ranking of sets]; (18) cardinality [valuation of sets]; (19) novel
representation of number; (20) transfer to novel numbers; (21) procedural translation
of numbers; (22) modality transfer of numbers; and (23) symbolic representation
and quantitative valuing of symbols. Animal research studies have documented that
various animals have accomplished at one time or another 21 of the 23 unique
numerical tasks. No evidence exists yet for animal symbolic and mathematical use
of zero, or nominal number use; only humans have demonstrated these capacities.
Considering that it took thousands of years for humans to develop modern
mathematical competencies of zero, it should not be surprising that human use of
zero is not yet documented in animal behavior. Further, nominal number use—an
integral part of the symbol-laden, modern human culture—has not been seen in
animal behavior either.
448 T. E. Ricks
Intriguingly, honeybees demonstrate mathematical capacity in all eight numeri-

cal concept categories, and of the 23 unique numerical tasks, research confirms
honeybees can manifest at least 14 of them (italicized in the list above, Howard,
2018, p 197; see p 173 for preliminary evidence of ordinality of sets, which might
make 15 total). If we add one more task completion—the lowly sensory representa-
tion of zero—which I assume bees fulfill, considering their competence with zero
numerosity (no one has yet studied sensory representation of zero in honeybees)—
honeybees manifest mathematical capacity in over two-thirds of the categories.
Imagine! All that, done by the little, humble honeybee, with a tiny brain over 80,000
times smaller than the human brain (roughly one million neurons compared with
humans’ 86 billion neurons) (Azevedo et al., 2009; Menzel & Giurfa, 2001). For
such a tiny brain, the bee brain manifests significant mathematical power; humans
have yet to develop comparable mathematics to match the honeybee’s zero mathe-
matical competence through machine learning. Researchers (Schmicker &
Schmicker, 2018) have built a three-layered neural network to mimic the findings
about “the quantitative value of an empty set” (Howard, 2018, p 212) that honeybees
manifest through standard animal cognition training; the neural network was
“trained using the same stimuli and protocol” (Howard, 2018, p 212) that the bee
experiments used. Howard et al. (2018) admits: “We still have a lot to learn from
biologically evolved processing systems, such as the honeybee brain, as while
bees… took less than 100 trials to learn the task, the simple neural network took
about 4 million trials to learn the same task” (p 212, emphasis added). And experts
in the field of honeybee cognition believe with proper experimental setups and fur-
ther research, honeybees may accomplish several more of the remaining unique
numerical tasks, although their short lifetime limits training opportunities (Howard,
2018). This high ratio (roughly two-thirds) of numerical mathematical task-completion
found in honeybees but not other species may be as much a function of the ease of using
honeybees for animal cognition research as a measure of their mathematical compe-
tence; other animals may demonstrate similar or greater mathematical capacity once
research is conducted on those more difficult-to-study species.
As the field of animal cognition continues to mature, more and more mathematical
capacities are being discovered in more and more species. The abilities to subitize and
approximate numerosity have obvious evolutionary (e.g., natural selection) advantages:
“Numerical competence... is of adaptive value. It enhances an animal’s ability to sur-
vive by exploiting food sources, hunting prey, avoiding predation, navigating, and per-
sisting in social interactions” (Nieder, 2020a, p 605). For the animal cognition
researcher, the question is no longer if animals mathematize, but how (Nieder, 2013).
22.3 Neurological Research on Animal Mathematics
Neurological research on animal brains (conducted while animals manifest mathe-

matical-like behavior) strengthens the argument that animals are indeed doing legit-
imate mathematics by documenting “the neuronal mechanisms of numerical
competence” (Nieder & Dehaene, 2009, p 186). Two branches of neurological

evidence support the legitimacy of animal mathematics: “number neurons” and the
similarity between human and animal brain activation while mathematizing.
22.3.1 Number Neurons
Many researchers have documented so-called number neurons (Dehaene, 2002,

2011; Nieder, 2013; Piazza & Dehaene, 2004) in various animal species’ brains
while performing mathematical tasks. Number neurons are specific neurons in
special regions of animals’ brains that spike electrically when the animal receives
numerical stimuli in visual or auditory form (e.g., dots on a screen, sequential
tones), or mentally numerates body motions, like limb motions (Nieder et al., 2002;
Sawamura et al., 2002). First identified in domestic cat brains (Thompson et al.,
1970), number neurons have also been documented in crow (Ditz & Nieder, 2015),
rhesus monkey (Nieder, 2013), and Japanese macaque monkey brains (Sawamura
et al., 2002). To find the number neurons, researchers surgically insert super-thin
wires into specific math-related brain regions and slowly adjust the depth of the
wire until a number neuron (tuned to the desired numerosity researchers wish to
study) is identified. These specialized nerve cells are “tuned to the number of
[sensory] items [experienced] show[ing] maximum [signal] activity to one of the
presented quantities—a neuron’s preferred numerosity—and a progressive drop off
as the quantity [becomes] more remote from the preferred number” (Nieder &
Dehaene, 2009, pp 188–189).
Researchers found, for example, in a monkey’s prefrontal cortex (Nieder &
Merten, 2007), a neuron tuned to the quantity of 20 (as well as one tuned to the
quantity of 6, another to 4, and one for 2); the fact that specific neurons in a monkey’s
brain differentiate a visual spread of 20 dots from other presentations of dots is
admittedly quite impressive. Some number neurons encode for perceived numerosity
(input modality, like viewing dots on a screen or hearing a sequence of tones) and
others for psychophysical movement (output modality, such as keeping track of
body movements) (Nieder & Miller, 2004; Sawamura et al., 2002). In certain regions
of the brains of monkeys, number neurons cluster in high percentages; Viswanathan
and Nieder (2013) found in the ventral intraparietal area (VIP) of the intraparietal
sulcus (IPS) that 10% of sampled neurons evidenced exclusively numerosity-
selective spiking. In one study, (Nieder et al. 2006), three separate types of number
neurons were found: (1) a type only encoding numerical information perceived
simultaneously (spatial: as in a spread of dots on a screen), (2) a type only encoding
numerical information perceived sequentially (temporal: as in food items placed in
a bowl one by one, a series of auditory tones, or a sequence of flashing lights), and
(3) a third type of number neuron that integrated the numerosities encoded by the
first two types of neurons, for storage in memory.
The colloquial term “number neurons” can be a bit misleading, because these
neurons encode more than just numerosity. Tudusciuc and Nieder (2007) discovered
450 T. E. Ricks
that roughly one-fifth of neurons in the monkey IPS spiked for numerosity and/or
continuous quantity. Findings by other researchers demonstrate number neurons
can encode for nonnumerical parameters such as size, luminance, angle, position,
and density (Cohen Kadosh & Henik, 2006; Pinel et al., 2004; Zago et al., 2008).
Bongard and Nieder (2010) found that individual monkey prefrontal cortex number
neurons “can flexibly represent highly abstract mathematical rules” (p 2279), such
as greater than/less than concepts, helping monkeys at the macroscale to consciously
“understand relations between numerosities and how to apply them successfully in
a goal-directed manner” (p 2279). Some researchers have found interlinked number
neurons (Diester & Nieder, 2008) that mutually inhibit or mutually reinforce each
other’s numerate spike potential. Brains are vast interconnected structures of
neurons, so no real surprise to find interconnected neurons; what is surprising is that
the interactions form a type of intricate back-and-forth neuronal dialogue instead of
just signals cascading from one nerve cell to the next. Both neurons “talk” to each
other simultaneously to influence each other during the entire numeration-spiking
process. Diester and Nieder (2008) posit this process enables more refined tuning by
number neurons to their preferred numerosity. These interlinked number neurons
evidence mathematical communication at the smallest inter-cellular level.
In 2013, Viswanathan and Nieder controlled for the possibility that neurons were
manifesting trained animal conditioning (instead of numerosity) by designing a
clever experiment testing monkeys’ sense of color with colored dots; while running
these color experiments (that varied the numerosity of the same-colored dots), the
number neurons of each monkey were also being recorded electronically. Even
though these monkeys had not been trained to discriminate numerosity, and could
not differentiate numerosity behaviorally (the monkeys were tested later for their
numerical capacity with the same dot patterns—this time in black—and showed
scores no better than random chance), the number neurons in monkeys’ brains
encoded the number of dots appearing on the colored screens. This series of
experiments confirm that monkey number neurons intuitively recognize numerosity,
even though the animal has not received numerical training by researchers.
Recent studies have investigated “number neurons” in humans. In 2004, nonin-
vasive functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on human brain blood
flow patterns by Piazza et al. (2004) suggested the existence of similar tuning curves
for numerosity in human brains to those operating in animals. In 2009, Jacob’s and
Nieder’s work hinted human number neurons exist from evidence gathered through
electrocorticography readings of masses of spiking neurons; groups of neurons
were behaving similarly to the way number neurons would. In 2013, Shum et al.
described the surgical implantation of 157 electrodes on the underside of the brains
of seven epilepsy patients, a rare example of human intracranial electroencephalog-
raphy. They reported “identifying the precise anatomical location of neurons with a
preferential response to visual numerals… embedded within a larger pool of neu-
rons that respond nonpreferentially to visual symbols that have lines, angles, and
curves” (Shum et al., 2013, p 6712). Then in 2018, Kutter et al. reported finding
individual number neurons in human neurosurgical patients, specifically “585 sin-
gle neurons in... nine human subjects performing... calculation tasks” (p 754). They
summarize their findings thus: “Using single-cell recordings in subjects performing

a calculation task, we have shown that single neurons in... humans are tuned to
numerical values in nonsymbolic dot displays. The data about nonsymbolic number
coding from humans can now be compared to those of nonhuman primates” (Kutter
et al., 2018, p 758).
22.3.2 Similar Brain Signatures
In addition to the existence of number neurons in humans, animal brain-imaging

signatures are similar to those of humans while performing similar mathematical
tasks. Numerous studies document that the very same regions activate in both
primates’ and humans’ brains when research subjects (primate or human) perform
a similar mathematical activity (Arsalidou & Taylor, 2011; Nieder, 2021; Tudusciuc
& Nieder, 2007). Such comparisons are possible because human and primate brains
share similar brain structure (Azevedo et al., 2009). Neurological research suggests
two similar areas in primate and human brains activate when performing
mathematical activity: the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC)
(Amalric & Dehaene, 2019; Arsalidou & Taylor, 2011; Dehaene, 2011; Eger, 2016;
Hyde et al., 2010; Nieder, 2012, 2013, 2016; Nieder & Dehaene, 2009; Nieder et al.
2006; Piazza et al., 2007; Shum et al., 2013). In humans, these regions are known
for a variety of mathematical competencies, such as algebraic thinking (Maruyama
et al., 2012; Monti et al., 2012).
Because these two regions play different roles in processing numerosity, the IPS
and PFC manifest unique neuroimaging signatures when both primate and human
subjects perform mathematical tasks. For example, the IPS processes more
nonsymbolic numerosity while the PFC is connected with more symbolic number
processing; additionally, the IPS processes the nonsymbolic numerosity before the
PFC, suggesting that the PFC gets its numerosity information directly from the IPS
(Nieder & Dehaene, 2009). This neuroimaging evidence suggests that humans, even
with our powerful and unique symbolic mathematical capabilities not manifest by
any animal, still utilize portions of our brains prior to symbolization similar to the
way animals mathematize; humans are thus subconsciously doing mathematics like
animals—all the time—despite the seemingly non-animal-ness of our conscious,
symbol-heavy mathematics. Kutter et al. (2018) posit: “Our human-specific
symbolic number skills… spring from nonsymbolic set size representations….
suggest[ing] number neurons as neuronal basis of human number representations
that ultimately give rise to number theory and mathematics” (p 753).
In summary, animals not only produce mathematical behavior like humans,
implying similar cognitive mathematizing (Cantlon, 2012; Nieder, 2020a), but the
way animals’ brains function while producing such behavior is also similar to how
human brains do the very same mathematics (Autio et al., 2021), strengthening the
argument that animals indeed do at least some forms of mathematizing.
452 T. E. Ricks
22.4 Discussion: Animal Mathematics Matters

Clearly, animals cannot match human mathematical capacity in many areas, espe-
cially the sophisticated, symbol-heavy, precision-based mathematics so prevalent in
modern technological societies. Why would animal mathematics, therefore, matter
for the field of mathematics education? Most obviously, cognitive and neurological
animal mathematics studies legitimize the existence of animal mathematics and
challenge the common mathematics education belief that only humans mathema-
tize. Thus, the first reason animal mathematics matters for mathematics education is
that continued antagonism by mathematics education against the acceptance of animal
mathematics is increasingly anachronistic and scientifically inaccurate. It is time for
mathematics education to familiarize itself with the burgeoning literature supporting
animal mathematics. Secondly, animal mathematics studies deepen and enrich our
understanding about the philosophy of human mathematics and related human mathe-
matics education. Animal mathematics studies raise intriguing questions about the
nature of mathematics, where it comes from, and how it is so unreasonably effective
(Wigner, 1960). Such research on animal mathematics supports previous researchers’
beliefs—e.g., Piaget—on the potential biological roots of mathematical development
(Brannon, 2014; Duda, 2017; Piaget, 1971).
But perhaps the most important reason studies about animal mathematics matter
for mathematics education is these studies reveal the similarity between human and
animal mathematics. Together, the comparative cognition and neurological research
evidence suggest that humans share with animals basic, underlying mathematical
capacities continuously operating in the cognitive/neurological background, even
when humans do more sophisticated, human-unique mathematics. Neonates,
nonverbal infants, children, adults—even professional mathematicians—manifest
animal-like mathematics while performing human mathematics (Nieder & Dehaene,
2009). Thus, animal mathematics matters for mathematics education not so much
because animals sometimes mathematize like humans, but because humans always
mathematize like animals.
For example, the presence of the numerical distance effect by “human number
neurons… supports the hypothesis that high-level human numerical abilities are
rooted in biologically determined mechanisms” (Kutter et al., 2018, p 759). This
evidence suggests that human symbolic mathematics is an outgrowth of
evolutionarily ancient mathematics that we share with animals, being “deeply
rooted in our neuronal heritage as primates and vertebrates” (Nieder, 2020a, p 28).
All humans—regardless of the type, sophistication, or level of mathematizing,
and regardless of the age, developmental status, or training (including the
professional mathematicians!)—appear to mathematize with foundational, animal-
like numerosity processing at the autonomous neuronal level, because human
“symbolic number cognition [is] grounded in neuronal circuits devoted to deriving
precise numerical values from approximate numerosity representations” (Kutter
et al., 2018, p 759). The fact that humans share with animals a distinct
“math- responsive network” (Amalric & Dehaene, 2019) activated during both
sophisticated, human-only mathematical thinking as well as the more mundane—
and that neuroimaging differentiates these human brain regions from human seman-
tic networks (Nieder & Dehaene, 2009)—suggest that human mathematics consists
of more than just the symbolic processing that only humans possess.
Human mathematical thinking is fundamentally rooted in biological core sys-
tems shared with animals that always activate during any type of human mathema-
tizing (Dehaene et al., 2006; Xu & Spelke, 2000). These shared forms of
mathematical thinking—so different from the symbol-heavy, precision-based mod-
ern mathematics so emphasized in contemporary mathematics classrooms—are
always percolating in the encephalic background. They form consistent, powerful
ways of mathematizing about our world that need more attention in mathematics
education pedagogy and scholarship. Our curricular over-emphasis on symbols,
terms, procedures, and precision already disenfranchises students, especially those
manifesting neurodiversity (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2016); we should make room in
our curriculum and research for more understanding of the animal-like mathematics
that all humans manifest whenever they mathematize. Animal mathematics accep-
tance by mathematics educators has the potential to influence many theories of and
in mathematics education (Bikner-Ahsbahs & Vohns, 2019). In particular, animal
mathematics research illuminates similar underlying neuronal circuitry responsible
for human mathematical thinking. Further, animal mathematics research is already
improving understanding of various mathematical disabilities such as dyscalculia
(Anobile et al., 2018; Ansari, 2008; Butterworth, 2005; Butterworth et al., 2011;
Castaldi et al., 2018; Kucian et al., 2011; Mazzocco et al., 2011; Piazza et al., 2010;
Rubinsten & Sury, 2011) and opens avenues for productive translational research
(Bisazza & Santacà, 2022) to improve student learning outcomes (Iuculano &
Cohen Kadosh, 2014; Piazza et al., 2013).
22.5 Conclusion
This chapter has challenged the common, contemporary mathematics education

belief that only humans create and do mathematics by highlighting emerging
cognitive and neurological evidence that animal mathematics exists and is similar to
at least some forms of human mathematics. Further, comparative cognitive and
neurological research suggest that all humans manifest animal-like mathematics
even when doing human-only mathematics. Accepting animal mathematics by the
mathematics education community will augment the work of mathematics education
by illuminating better the foundational cognitive and neurological manner in which
humans create and do mathematics.
454 T. E. Ricks
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Part V
Concluding
Chapter 23
Living in the Ongoing Moment
Bronisław Czarnocha and Małgorzata Marciniak
The time of preparation of this manuscript was marked by the appearance of an

advanced artificial intelligence (AI) product, in the form of ChatGPT. This new,
unusual, yet somehow expected feature, has confronted all of us, humans and in
particular the educators with its power and possible impact upon mathematics class-
rooms. From the point of view of the philosophy of mathematics education, AI
inspires more questions and directions for research investigations, possibly making
a topic for another book. Thus, this summary chapter is written in a very particular
way creating more questions within the themes provided by the authors.
Looking back at the process of the creation of the book, we see that it was very
fortunate that AI became vastly available after the main chapters have been written
because they represent the state of our philosophizing before AI has appeared. So
now when the manuscript has been completed and all chapters are assembled, we,
the editors, can look back at our work and reflect on the concept of the current book
taking into account the new AI component. This brings a host of new questions, all
of them centered on how the philosophy of mathematics education can guide us to
the doorstep of the new scientific and cultural revolution that AI is clearly announc-
ing. Marciniak (Chap. 12) discusses the paradigm shifts in the history of mathemat-
ics education, and it seems to be clear that fundamental paradigm shifts are upon us.
At present, the parameters and scopes of those changes are very difficult to assess
as we do not know yet either the possibilities or limits of AI’s impact on humans. In
the further parts of the summary chapter, we will approach the question of the
B. Czarnocha
Hostos Community College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA
M. Marciniak (*)
LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York,
Long Island City, NY, USA
e-mail: mmarciniak@lagcc.cuny.edu
462 B. Czarnocha and M. Marciniak
philosophy of mathematics education and AI by articulating explicit and implicit

theme concerns of the chapters’ authors.
But wait. Who are the authors? Who are the mathematics education philoso-
phers? What inspires them and what are the methods of their works? Are they young
or old in age or philosophical experience, do they work in academia, do they write
about class practice or analyze statistical data? What are they trying to accomplish
with their writing? Bicudo (Chap. 3) emphasizes the realization of philosophical
thinking. Thus, we ask, what even is this philosophy of mathematics education?
What topics should be discussed? Watson (Chap. 6) skillfully locates mathematics
education in a contemporary system theory, while Czarnocha (Chap. 8) suggested
that philosophy of the domain starts from examination of its fundamental problems.
Thus, a new fundamental problem has appeared during the time of writing the book:
what issues does mathematics education need to consider in the light of the skills of
ChatGPT and other advanced chatbots, which are with no doubt coming in the near
future (as in the new Bing searching engine).
The book displays a plethora of themes in philosophy of mathematics education
and a cornucopia of ideas bringing together authors from multiple cultures, nation-
alities, and countries across five continents. As expected, these authors think in
many directions in their own, unique ways, about a variety of topics, carrying their
ideas across through as many pages as they need. Some authors zoom out spreading
their work across many topics, while others zoom in and focus on one, well-defined
theme. Others reflect on the past, present, and future, while some simply find one
time frame and one place to address the needs of mathematics education that are
important to them. Thus, we hear. We listen to their voices when they strive to
answer the question that has been nurturing teachers for centuries. Why is mathe-
matics, this queen of sciences, somehow not so likable to the students? Why does
she cause such a stress and anxiety among students? What can the teachers do to
ease the presence of the queen and make her more accessible and more approach-
able to future generations?
One of the most frequent complaints of students about mathematics is that it is
disconnected from reality. However, it is physics, the source of many mathematical
ideas and ultimately the king of sciences, that brings these connections forward.
Will AI be able to bridge the gap between theory and reality and thus make mathe-
matics, the queen of sciences, not only likable but a fully fledged member of the
human community? Ernest (Chap. 1) is asking a relevant question of the ontology
of our subject that is philosophy of mathematics education: “The ontological prob-
lem of mathematics education concerns persons. What is the nature and being of
persons, including both children and adults, or precisely the mathematical identity
of mathematicians and the developing mathematical identities of students? What are
these mathematical identities and how are they constituted?” What is the mathemat-
ical identity of the ChatGPT or its more advanced versions? How can the mathemat-
ical identity of a chatbot contribute to the development and formation of the
mathematical identity of a human student? That question becomes a bit more acute
taking into account John Mason’s (Chap. 5) focus on the process of abstraction as a
component of mathematical identity. Abstracting is here seen as a change of a
23 Living in the Ongoing Moment 463
relationship between the person and the set of words, and hence a change of the
relationship with self-constructed “virtual objects.” Can AI creatures undertake
such a change of mathematical identity through abstracting? More precisely, can AI
creatures abstract? If we look at abstraction categorically as a forgetting functor, AI
should have no problem with it. We wonder what could be the AI creature’s relation-
ship or its change with the AI-constructed “virtual” mathematical object. Would
there be a relationship?
Goldin (Chap. 7) raises the ante asking for the self-integrity of philosophy of
mathematics education; in particular he examines the question of mathematical
validity and objectivity on one hand and its sociocultural origins, on the other. While
the relationship between the two has been the place of strong disagreements, Goldin
searches for the integrated approach where both principles, seemingly contradic-
tory, are shown the possibility to coexist. How would AI creatures relate to such a
situation, generating a compromising approach to the two seemingly incompatible
principles, or objectivity and cultural subjectivity? Creation of such a compromise
requires bisociative thinking that arises simultaneously out of two unconnected
matrices of thought, a concept explored by Czarnocha in (Chap. 8). This is a cre-
ative process, and if AI creatures can do such constructions, it would mean they are
indeed creative. Are they? Would they? Creativity is held as the uniquely human
capacity, on the very border between humans and automation. Can AI creatures
have experience – if such a term makes sense here? Or if creativity is the feature
differentiating humans from AI, should education withdraw from its traditional test-
ing approaches and focus on facilitating creativity? Similar questions are brought
forward by the concept of internalization of mathematics via the process of learning
as studied by Baker (Chap. 9). Maybe instead of teaching more content, we may
focus on teaching more intensely even if it leads to writing poems about the
Pythagorean Theorem. This remains within the curriculum inquiry of what to teach
and how to measure progress. The sociocultural grounds of mathematics and math-
ematics education raised by Goldin and pursued by authors such as Miguel et al.
(Chap. 18), Maurício Rosa (Chap. 19), and Obreque and Andalon (Chap. 21) bring
new questions and concerns related to the AI industry. Given that AI creatures are
made by us humans, we face the challenge of how to avoid imparting to it our own
sociocultural biases. Who and how verifies whether AI may be biased against peo-
ple of color or indigenous students? Similarly, we can ask whether it may be biased
against females or LGBTQ. Who trains AI’s non-bias toward all possible groups of
people? Is the ethics of AI, even within a small scope of education, a subject of
training? Or a subject of firm rules imprinted into the system as unchangeable? Who
and based on what principles makes decisions about such setup? More than that, if
asked, would AI display ethical judgments and what would be the value of such
display? Taking into account the Ubuntu philosophy of life as essentially commu-
nal, and rejecting individualistic features, how to embrace AI’s development glob-
ally? How could AI accommodate a vast sociocultural milieu remaining ethical
towards all subjects? Finally, pursuing the ideas of Obreque and Andalon, the ques-
tion arises whether AI creatures operate on an idealistic basis having their ideas
implanted a priori by humans or it is a materialistic creature that derives its knowl-

edge from the motion of matter within its circuitry.
Implications of futuristically advanced and broadly available AI are quite unpre-
dictable, although the Commander Data of the Second-Generation Star Trek series,
the human android explores the horizon of these implications. This is a worthy
question since interactions with AI are inevitably going to change future humans.
While thinking today about future education, we would like to take that change into
consideration, even if this task seems quite challenging, if even possible. We already
are aware of the influence of technology on young people and are aware of some
who spend their childhood playing video games. However, they still realize the
value of human interactions and miss them during remote instruction. Are such
human-AI interactions working for the progress of the human mind? Shall we limit
such interactions for the sake of the mental and social health of students? According
to Matsushima (Chap. 10) dialogues among humans improve mathematics learning.
Would a similar feature take place for interactions between humans and AI? Fearing
that interactions with AI may disturb someone’s view of reality, one can ask: what
even is reality? Can mathematical modeling be used to model the reality that is com-
ing? In his work (Chap. 16) Schürmann discusses classroom-level mathematical
modeling and its philosophical aspects mainly in the light of the relationship
between the model and the actual observations. But now, the multifold of realities
that contain the real world and the mathematical world are being expanded by the
reality of IA. Can AI model itself if asked about it, or in other words, what are pos-
sible states of self-awareness of the AI creatures? What would be the validity of
such AI-made models in the view of syntactics? Commander Data of Star Trek was
fully aware of his being as the complex interplay of many algorithms connected
with the complete absence of feelings, of human feelings, and that fact was of some
concern to him as he could not bridge it. On the other hand, as we know from the
works of Chamberlin, Liljedahl, and Savic (2022), affect plays a fundamental role
in the process of learning mathematics, in the development of mathematical inti-
macy, and in bonding with mathematics. What would be the role of AI here?
Nevertheless, if reality can be influenced by education, then rethinking education
is mandatory for the sake of future generations. And educational paradigms should
be defined anew. In this new education, what would be the place for Education for
Sustainable Development (ESD) as discussed by Hui Chuan Li (Chap. 17)?
Considering the fast pace of the ongoing changes, one could even doubt whether
ESD can be set up before its value expires. May the goal of matching education with
the needs of society or an individual be an ever-moving target? With the most dis-
putable topics related to the values of performative skills, Ole Skovsmose (Chap.
14) introduces the concept of performative mathematics opening a variety of discus-
sions. What new features of performative analysis will AI bring? Will AI be able to
perform mathematics the same way we do? In all aspects? Or maybe studying the
struggle of AI will allow a better understanding of the difficulties of students’ per-
formance. Or having handy and always available AI to perform for us, shall we
withdraw from seeing value in performative skills? But can AI perform the entire
spectrum of (mathematical) thinking available to humans? For example, can AI
23 Living in the Ongoing Moment 465
perform inquiry? Produce mathematical knowledge in the way presented by

Stoyanova-Kennedy (Chap. 15)? Can AI pose meaningful problems and reason
about solution methods? We asked ChatGPT to design a few problems related to
graphing certain functions, and the results were unimpressive; thus, we began to
wonder whether AI will ever be able to draw meaningful conclusions. Understand
(mathematical) jokes? Could AI understand mathematical paradoxes valued so
much by Yenealem Ayalev (Chap. 13)? Will AI ever understand infinity? What strat-
egy should be applied in education then? Should teaching mathematics include
more paradoxes as an attempt to differentiate human learning from artificial learn-
ing? Or this would be a missed attempt and possibly, philosophizing will remain the
only human activity not mastered by AI? Discussion of the limitations of AI brings
a fundamental question of whether AI can ever become sentient and develop any
form of self-awareness. Can AI ever be aware of their states of mind? Can AI be
aware of its own subtle leaps of awareness the same way humans are, as presented
by Hausberger and Patras (Chap. 4)?
Maybe when discussing teaching mathematics, one should follow the idea of
separating mathematical formalism and intuition. Min Bahadur Shresta (Chap. 20)
draws our attention to the fact that formal mathematics is a relatively recent (nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries) discovery emphasizing the fact that for centuries,
humans have been performing mathematics without formalism and axiomatization.
It is quite clear that while AI can master logical aspects of mathematics, it is likely
that humans can master intuitive mathematics much better than AI. Should mathe-
matics education then reduce logical math and emphasize intuitive math? Being not
burdened anymore by the necessity of carrying all algebraic manipulations flaw-
lessly, shall we expect that students will joyfully engage in abstract mathematical
thinking? Somehow, based on our current experience as college teachers, we do not
see it coming anytime soon since the current attitude skews more toward avoidance
than engagement into abstracting. But maybe it is just an intermediate stage between
old and new education. However, intuitive performance carries a serious challenge
for education as it is difficult to measure its progress. And measuring progress is a
valid factor of education for society. How should the progress of students’ learning
be evaluated then? Can AI help with the matter of valid assessment? Interestingly,
humans are not the only species performing mathematics intuitively. Thomas
E. Ricks (Chap. 22) describes animals performing mathematics, but they do not
worry about the quality of their performance and certainly not the grades. Potentially,
animal brains developing mathematical thinking can give hints on how little chil-
dren can develop mathematical thinking in an organic, natural way. If animals can
mathematize, then is it possible that AI could mathematize on its own? On the more
practical side, could AI in the future act as a skillful interpreter between animal
languages and human languages so we can, in particular, understand the develop-
ment of mathematization in animals?
In this big excitement about AI, we still need to remember that it is just an algo-
rithm, a finite sequence of rigorous instructions performed by a machine. The nature
of human thinking is not exactly of this type, since we do not always carry the same
rigor and the finiteness of the instructions is uncertain. Following suggestions by
Regina D. Möller and Peter Collignon (Chap. 11), should future education signifi-
cantly increase the teaching of algorithms? To what extent? Shall students learn the
peaceful history of programming instead of the violent history of human wars and
uprisings? And learn programming languages instead of human languages?
Programming languages may be quite useful but are applications at the center of the
education we want to design?
One of the central issues in our initial discussion of the relationship between
mathematics education and artificial intelligence is creativity. The previous discus-
sion of feelings, intuition, and algorithms lead to the role of AI creatures in mathe-
matical creativity, within the emerging domain of philosophy of creativity. Will
interaction with AI enhance human mathematical creativity or will limit our creative
endeavors? That depends a bit on the degree to which the AI creatures themselves
are creative and how they can facilitate human creativity. At present, Margaret
Boden (2004) assures us that AI can go as far as “to seem being creative” without
yet any indication as to whether “it is creative.” How does this matter for mathemat-
ics education? There certainly is a difference in the quality of interactions between
interacting with the entity that seems to be creative and the one that is creative. It
seems that imitation of creativity only permits receiving the results of the process
and prevents co-creation, which is the most joyful aspect of true creativity.
All these topics touched by the authors may be disputed in the light of theories
of scientific revolutions as performed just like by Otte and Radu (Chap. 2), from
Popper to Heisenberg. Hopefully AI will have something to suggest in relation to
future transformations of sciences and education.
While feeling very present in this ongoing moment and philosophizing about the
future, using previously acquired knowledge, we find space to observe one more
leap of mind. Following it, we emerge in an imaginary world of a Polish futurist
Stanislaw Lem. His book Fables for Robots (1964) contains stories written by and
for AI. We find this futuristic literature very soothing as it fits exactly between clair-
voyance and philosophy of the future influences of AI on human reality.
References
Boden, M. A. (2004). The creative mind: Myths and mechanisms (second ed.).
Chamberlin S, Liljedahl P, Savic M, Editors (2022) Mathematical creativity: A developmental
perspective, Springer.
Lem, S. (1964). Fables for robots, (in Polish). Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Index
A C
Abstract, 87–101 Categorial knowledge, 65, 71, 76, 81, 84
Abstracting, 14, 103, 104, 107–116, 118, 119, Chatbot, 462
121, 122, 462, 463, 465 ChatGPT, 461, 462, 465
Abstraction, 4, 8–14, 17, 38, 47, 50, 76, 303, Color identification app, 399, 406
335, 361, 365, 414, 436, 439, 462, 463 Community of inquiry, 265, 299
Accommodation, 183, 184, 187, 188, 194, Complementarity of sense and
196, 366 reference, 52
Action scheme, 186, 188–189, 201 Conation, 155–157, 175
Aesthetics, 48–51, 55–60, 87, 144, 155, 156, 179, Constructivism, 125, 142–145, 148, 149, 153,
269, 298, 301, 361, 376, 393, 405, 427 157, 158, 183, 194–195, 209, 335,
Aha! moment, 167–178 413, 420
Algorithms, 119, 150, 168, 227–230, 232–236, Conversation, 6, 7, 20–32, 37, 241, 245, 264,
279–282, 287, 296, 363, 365–368, 371, 371, 374
373, 374, 378, 416, 417, 419, Creative imagination, 29, 165, 253, 254,
445, 464–466 263, 264
Analytic philosophy, 60, 277 Creativity, 144, 155, 156, 163–180, 183,
Animal cognition, 444, 447, 448 185–187, 195, 223, 224, 240, 264,
Appropriation, 192–193, 197, 199, 200, 202, 463, 466
203, 205, 209–218, 220–224 Creativity and reason, 163, 168, 169, 173
Art, 44, 48–50, 56, 58–60, 77, 78, 132, 184, Critical mathematics education, 284, 293, 296,
195, 245, 247, 262, 273, 336, 340, 360 297, 306, 334
Artificial intelligence (AI), 163, 164,
233, 461–466
Assimilation, 47, 184, 187, 213 D
Autopoiesis, 127–130 Decolonial mathematics education, 351–354,
Axiomatic, 43, 44, 54, 79, 97–101, 271, 272, 364, 374, 377, 397
371, 409–427, 433, 435, 436 Defining, 107, 108, 112–113, 115, 116, 121,
122, 127, 135, 154, 188, 229, 246, 385,
411, 435, 436
B Deontic, 7, 12, 13, 17, 18, 36, 37
Biological mathematics, 18 Dialogic space, 30–31, 36–38
Bisociation, 175–177, 184, 186–188, 195, 203 Divergent thinking approach, 165
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to 467
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35209-6
468 Index
E Life-world, 270, 271, 278, 280–282, 285, 286,

Education for sustainable development (ESD), 288, 343
331–334, 337–339, 342–344, 464 Logicism, 145–147, 157, 271–273, 275, 312,
Empirical truth, 146, 147 335, 420, 423
Engagement, 23, 27, 36–38, 144, 155–157, Luhmann, N., 125–133, 135–137
302, 305, 333, 396, 465
Epistemology, 20, 21, 48–51, 56, 87, 127, 143,
157, 179, 294, 295, 297, 304, 363, M
430–432, 438, 439 Materialism, 429–441
Ethical reflection, 270, 286–288 Math classes, 198, 227–230, 232, 234–236,
Exactness, 65, 71, 73, 74, 78, 80 388, 405, 439
Mathematical actions, 10, 17, 103, 106, 107, 118
Mathematical identity, 3, 16, 18–38, 305,
F 462, 463
Fallibilism, 150–153, 355, 356, 359, 361 Mathematical objects, 3–18, 36–38, 48, 65,
fMRI imagery, 450 66, 89, 90, 92, 97, 101, 105, 137, 149,
Formalism, 145, 146, 150, 153, 157, 271–273, 269, 336, 416, 419, 434, 435, 437–439,
275, 335, 359, 361, 363, 412, 413, 415, 441, 463
420, 423, 465 Mathematical signs, 5, 6, 10–11, 194
Futurology, 213, 224, 264, 265, 464, 466 Mathematical structuralism, 97
Mathematics, 3, 44, 63, 88, 103, 125, 141,
163, 183, 210, 227, 239, 253, 269, 293,
G 309, 332, 351, 382, 409, 429, 443, 461
General education, 228, 233–236 Mathematics education, 3, 4, 8, 10, 18, 19, 21,
Generalizing, 79, 97, 103, 107–109, 122 34, 37, 38, 44, 59, 63–67, 69–84, 87,
Gestalt approach, 165, 166, 177 88, 104, 125–128, 131, 133–138, 141,
142, 144, 147, 148, 150–153, 163–165,
167, 171, 173–180, 183, 229, 231–235,
H 239–242, 255, 256, 262–264, 285, 286,
Hindu mathematics, 410, 415–420, 424, 426 306, 311–313, 320, 321, 323, 331–344,
History of education, 243, 245, 249, 250 352–355, 368–370, 374–376, 381–406,
Human origins, 141–158 412, 443–453, 461–463, 465, 466
Husserlian horizons, 88, 91, 101 Mathematics in action, 270
Mathematization, 51, 55, 60, 65–68, 71, 74,
76–78, 80–82, 255, 294–296, 304, 465
I Measurement of creativity, 177
Idealism, 6, 143, 429–441 Modelling cycle, 309, 310, 321–326
Individualism, 4, 19–20, 59, 386 Moment of insight, 184, 187, 195–197, 200,
Interiorization, 176, 183, 189–190, 192–194, 203, 204
196, 197, 203, 205
Internalization, 36, 38, 176, 183, 184,
191–204, 211, 213, 214, 218, 220, 463 N
Intersubjectivity, 75, 82, 84, 211, Networking theories, 176, 177
218–220, 222–224 Neurology, 443–453
Intuitionism, 145, 146, 271, 273, 335, 420
O
K Objective validity, 141, 143
Kuhn theory of scientific revolutions, 241 Ontology, 3, 4, 6, 8, 16–18, 21, 25, 81, 83, 87,
127, 128, 178, 432, 439, 462
L
Language, 6, 46, 66, 88, 129, 144, 185, 210, P
243, 255, 270, 309, 313, 335, 351, 385, Paradox, 137, 178, 254, 256–259, 261, 262,
431, 465 265, 272, 273, 311, 372, 421, 425, 465
Index 469
Participatory scheme, 190, 191, 205 Reflective abstraction, 176, 183, 188–189,
Pedagogic actions, 103 200, 202–204
Percentage, 231, 400, 403–406, 449 Reflective knowing, 293–297, 306
Performative interpretation of language, 271, Remote instruction, 248, 250, 464
275–279, 283 Rigor, 67, 356, 357, 359, 409–427, 465
Performative interpretation of Rules and norms, 7, 13, 18
mathematics, 269–288
Phenomenology, 72, 75, 76, 87–101, 270, 274,
335, 336 S
Philosophical inquiry, 65, 293, 294, 297–306 Scientific revolution, 43–45, 52, 57, 59, 239,
Philosophy, 3, 45, 68, 87, 120, 137, 141, 163, 246, 466
209, 232, 253, 269, 296, 312, 332, 353, Secondary mathematics, 90, 231, 357
385, 409, 429, 452, 462 Semiotic, 8, 10, 43, 49–51, 96, 279
Philosophy of creativity, 163, 164, 166, 170, Shifts of attention, 101, 103–122
172, 177–180, 466 Social construction, 13, 15, 19–22, 384,
Philosophy of mathematical practice, 271, 430, 432
274, 275 Sociocultural perspective, 209, 214, 224, 427
Philosophy of mathematics, 8, 66, 87, 126, Socio-epistemological theory, 429–441
141, 163, 232, 269, 297, 332, 351, 409, Sociology of mathematics education, 133, 136
429, 461 Structural racism, 385, 386, 389, 392–394,
Philosophy of mathematics education, 66, 126, 404, 405
137, 141–143, 145, 146, 148, 151, Subjectivity, 75, 255, 295, 302, 385,
153–158, 232, 236, 275, 343, 351, 386, 463
374, 461–463 Sustainability, 331, 333, 334, 340, 341
Pivoting moments, 241, 243–250 Symbolic power, 276–278, 282, 304,
Platonism, 4–6, 8, 11, 145, 146, 150, 157, 335, 388, 404
336, 409, 434 Systems theory, 125–138
Postmodernism, 234, 311
Pre-categorial knowledge, 67–71, 74
Presentism, 8, 15 T
Proof, 15, 30, 35, 36, 44, 78, 80, 91, 101, 104, Teacher educator, 253, 263, 264
134, 146, 149–151, 153, 156, 255, 273, Theory, 5, 45, 64, 88, 125, 157, 165, 183, 219,
336, 353, 355–359, 361–368, 371, 372, 231, 234, 241, 256, 272, 313, 334, 356,
378, 410–413, 415–417, 419, 421, 397, 413, 429, 447, 462
424–427, 434 Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS), 88, 90,
Psychology of creativity, 163, 164 91, 100, 101
21st-century learning priorities, 343
R
Rational truth, 147, 148, 156 U
Reality, 3, 15, 21, 25–26, 36, 47–49, 51, University Mathematics Education, 101
55–59, 64–68, 71, 75, 76, 79–84, 137, Upapattis, 417–419, 424, 426, 427
143, 170, 193, 231, 236, 239, 241, 245,
248, 250, 256, 270, 275, 277, 282, 293,
303, 309–313, 321, 322, 325, 326, 336, W
367, 368, 370, 385, 393, 395, 396, 402, White mathematics, 387–391, 404, 405
414, 429–437, 439, 440, 446, 462, Wittgenstein, L., 6, 7, 15, 21, 24, 29, 30,
464, 466 351–354, 364–366, 368, 372, 373, 412

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Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo ·

Bronislaw Czarnocha · Maurício Rosa ·

ISBN 978-3-031-35208-9 ISBN 978-3-031-35209-6 (eBook)

Paper in this product is recyclable.

Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy of Mathematics Education approaches the

 art I – A Broad View of the Philosophy

“The Ontological Problems of Mathematics and Mathematics Education” repre-

2 Michael Otte and Mircea Radu

Otte and Radu, in “Scientific Revolutions: From Popper to Heisenberg,” compare

3 Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

Bicudo, in “Questions That Are at the Core of a Mathematics Education Project,”

4 Thomas Hausberger and Frédéric Patras

In chapter “Networking Phenomenology and Didactics: Horizons of Didactical

“Specifying, Defining, Generalizing and Abstracting Mathematically All Seen as

“Toward a Systems Theory Approach to Mathematics Education” by Steven Watson

 art II – Philosophy of Mathematics Education: Creativity

“Towards a philosophy of creativity in mathematics education,” by Bronisław

In the chapter “A Framework for Creative Insights within Internalization of

10 Mitsuru Matsushima

Mitsuru Matsushima’s chapter “A Reconsideration of Appropriation from a

11 Regina D. Möller and Peter Collignon

“Towards a Philosophy of Algorithms as an Element of Mathematics Education” is

12 Małgorzata Marciniak

Marciniak in “The times of transitions in the modern education” points toward

13 Yenealem Ayalew

“Some Examples of Mathematical Paradoxes with Implications for the Professional

 art III – Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education,

14 Ole Skovsmose

Skovsmose’s chapter, “A Performative Interpretation of Mathematics,” suggests a

15 Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy

The chapter “Reflective Knowing in the Mathematics Classroom: The Potential of

16 Uwe Schürmann

Schürmann, in chapter “Mathematical Modelling: A Philosophy of Science

between mathematics and reality by distinguishing between theoretical and obser-

17 Hui Chuan Li

In the chapter “Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Mathematics

 art IV – Philosophy of Mathematics Education in Diverse

1 8 Antonio Miguel, Elizabeth Gomes Souza

19 Maurício Rosa

In the chapter “Mathematics Education and Ubuntu Philosophy: The Analysis of

20 Min Bahadur Shrestha

“Philosophy, Rigor, and Axiomatics in Mathematics: Imposed or Intimately

mathematical validity. He observes that among different interpretations made about

21 Karla Sepúlveda Obreque and Javier Lezama Andalon

In the chapter “Idealism and materialism in mathematics teaching, an analysis from

22 Thomas E. Ricks

In the chapter “Cognitive and Neurological Evidence of Non-Human Animal

23 Bronisław Czarnocha and Małgorzata Marciniak

“Living in the Ongoing Moment” is a summarizing chapter. Czarnocha and

São Paulo, Brazil Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy of Mathematics Education approaches the

Introducing the Theme of Part I

Popper, and Werner Heisenberg, to authors who assume specific philosophical

Introducing the Theme of Part II

Part II develops beginnings of the philosophy of creativity in mathematics educa-

appropriation between an individual learner and the community of learners to iden-

illuminate the role of interpretation as well as existence of multiple truths in

Introducing the Theme of Part III

Introducing the Theme of Part IV

This part of the book assumes possibilities of defense in a decolonial way of

Rio Claro, Brazil Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

Part I A Broad View of the Philosophy of Mathematics Education

Part II Philosophy of Mathematics Education: Creativity

art I – A Broad View of the Philosophy

2 Michael Otte and Mircea Radu

3 Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

4 Thomas Hausberger and Frédéric Patras

art II – Philosophy of Mathematics Education: Creativity

10 Mitsuru Matsushima

11 Regina D. Möller and Peter Collignon

12 Małgorzata Marciniak

13 Yenealem Ayalew

art III – Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education,

14 Ole Skovsmose

15 Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy

16 Uwe Schürmann

17 Hui Chuan Li

art IV – Philosophy of Mathematics Education in Diverse

1 8 Antonio Miguel, Elizabeth Gomes Souza

19 Maurício Rosa

20 Min Bahadur Shrestha

21 Karla Sepúlveda Obreque and Javier Lezama Andalon

22 Thomas E. Ricks

23 Bronisław Czarnocha and Małgorzata Marciniak

São Paulo, Brazil Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

Introducing the Theme of Part I

Introducing the Theme of Part II

Introducing the Theme of Part III

Introducing the Theme of Part IV

Rio Claro, Brazil Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo

Part I A Broad View of the Philosophy of Mathematics Education

Part II Philosophy of Mathematics Education: Creativity

9 A Framework for Creative Insights Within Internalization

Part III Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education, Modelling

Part IV Philosophy of Mathematics Education in Diverse

20 Philosophy, Rigor, and Axiomatics in Mathematics:

1.2.3 What Are the Objects of Mathematics?

1.2.4 Mathematical Signs and Their Performativity

1.2.5 The Constitutional Role of Social Agreement

1.2.6 Signs as Constitutive of Mathematical Objects

1.2.7 The Human Construction of Mathematical Objects

1.2.8 The Ontology of Mathematical Objects

1.3 Human Subjects and Mathematical Identities

1.3.1 Being in Terms of Mathematical Identity

1.3.2 The Ideology of Individualism

1.3.3 Conversation and the Social Construction of Persons

1.3.4 The Critical Roles of Proponent and Responder

1.3.5 The Significance of Conversation in Social Activity

1.3.6 The Realities We Inhabit

1.3.7 Conversation and the Genesis of Thinking

1.3.8 Extending the Meaning as Use Theory

1.3.10 Roles and Power Differentials in Conversation